Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 90

Rest in Peace, Roger Moore

Actor Roger Moore died yesterday, aged 89. There’s also a lovely tribute by Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian.

I heard the news on the radio, while driving home after a grocery haul. “And now we have some tragic news from Britain”, the DJ said, whereupon I assumed it would be about the Manchester bombing. And then he announced that Roger Moore had died. And I thought, “Oh no, but he wasn’t even that old.”

Of course, the truth is that Roger Moore was old – 89 is a highly respectable age, after all. And it’s pretty much a miracle that until two days ago, all six actors who played James Bond in the official Bond films were still alive, given how decimated the cast of other franchises which debuted around the same time or even later (e.g. Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Avengers, Raumpatrouille Orion, the Winnetou movies, the Edgar Wallace movies, Mission Impossible, etc…) is today. But Roger Moore was one of those actors who always appeared ageless to the point that I was stunned when I did the math and realised that he’d been in his thirties when he played Simon Templar, in his early forties, when he played Lord Brett Sinclair, and that he was 45, when he took over the role of James Bond and 58, when he retired from it. Of course, you can see that Roger Moore was aging, especially over the course of his seven Bond movies. But though he was aging, he never seemed old.

Now I have to make a confession: James Bond is not the first role that I associate with Roger Moore. He never was my favourite or even second favourite Bond (I rank both Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton above him) and in fact, his Bond movies usually end up in the bottom half, whenever I try to rank them. A.O. Scott may claim at the New York Times that Roger Moore was the best Bond, because he was Generation X’s Bond, but though I’m Generation X, Roger Moore was never my Bond. For due to the old, three-channel, wholesome programming and nothing foreign public TV system, the Bond movies only started airing on German TV from the mid 1980s on and they started at the beginning with the Connery Bonds, so it took until the late 1980s, until they finally got to Roger Moore. Watching the movies in the cinema was out of the question due to a combination of being too young to watch them and overprotective parents and watching them on video was even more out of the question, since my parents believed that VCRs were a waste of money. So by the time I finally saw him as Bond, I already associated Roger Moore with other parts, namely Simon Templar and particularly Lord Brett Sinclair from The Persuaders, though I’d also seen him in his very early TV role as Ivanhoe.

For some reason, The Persuaders, starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis, is hardly remembered in the US at all, though British obituaries usually at least mention it. But the show was hugely popular in Germany, largely due to Rainer Brandt‘s brilliant pun and innuendo laden dubbing work (some of it so rude that adult me was lying on the floor gasping, “I can’t believe they dared to say that on TV. In 1971”), which turned a fairly straight adventure show into a brilliant fourth-wall breaking meta-commentary on the action adventure genre and television in general. By comparison, watching The Persuaders undubbed is a huge let-down, because where are the jokes? Quite a few episodes of The Persuaders dubbed into German are available online. There’s also a side by side comparison between the original and German dubbed version, which shows how much better the latter is.

When I first saw Roger Moore as James Bond, sometime in the late 1980s during the German TV premiere of Live and Let Die, it was like seeing Brett Sinclair or Simon Templar pretending to be James Bond. And why was he behaving like such an arsehole towards Solitaire? Coincidentally, seeing Pierce Brosnan as James Bond has a similar effect on me, only that it felt like watching Remington Steele impersonating Bond. And anyway, why is he fighting Richard Sharpe (cause that’s the role I associated Sean Bean with pre-Game of Thrones)? For that matter, why is he trying to kill Vic from La Boum* and the skinny guy fro The Full Monty?

These days, I still find Roger Moore’s seven Bond films more rewatchable than Brosnan’s. I will probably stick around and watch for a while, if I run across a Moore Bond on late-night TV (ditto for a Connery or Dalton Bond), though I rarely bother with Brosnan. For though the first two Brosnan Bonds were pretty good and hold up well even twenty-plus years later, but casting Sophie Marceau as a villainess in The World Is Not Enough was a huge mistake, because Sophie Marceau was an icon to a generation of European teenagers who saw their own lives and problems reflected in hers. When Brosnan’s Bond turned on her, he turned on all of us. It’s probably no coincidence that The World Is Not Enough was the last Bond movie I’ve bothered to watch in the theatre. I have seen bits and piece of Die Another Day and Casino Royale, all of Skyfall (which is a damn good Bond film, even though I don’t normally care for Daniel Craig’s Bond), though I’ve never gotten around to watching Quantum of Solace and Spectre. But the magic is gone and it has been gone since The World Is Not Enough.

Compared to the Dalton Bonds and beyond, Roger Moore’s James Bond movies are often downright silly and time hasn’t been kind to them. A lot of the old Bonds are racist, but Live and Let Die goes quite a bit beyond casual vintage racism into “I can’t believe they didn’t realise how offensive this was” territory, though the New Orleans funeral scene is great, Baron Samedi is still brilliant and Jane Seymour remains one of the most beautiful and memorable Bond girls of all times. The Man with the Golden Gun is just a bad movie, in spite of Christopher Lee’s presence (plus, Bond is mean to Herve Villechaise, which will horrify anybody who grew up watching Fantasy Island). The Spy Who Loved Me has the advantage of stunning Ken Adam sets, the submersible Lotus (who didn’t want one?), Richard Kiel’s Jaws as one of the most memorable henchmen, Barbara Bach as another great Bond girl (Come to think of it, Roger Moore’s Bond did have the best Bond girls) and of course that ski jump into the abyss (courtesy of Willy Bogner, master of the ski stunt, and stuntman Rick Sylvester), but the plot is a notable rehash of You Only Live Twice and Curd Jürgens is probably the worst Bond villain of all time. Moonraker is just plain bonkers, basically James Bond does Star Wars with Michael Lonsdale playing Hugo Drax as the Master from Doctor Who. On the plus side, it had Lois Chiles and Corinne Clery. For Your Eyes Only isn’t bad at all, but for some reason it’s the Bond film I remember the least and the one I usually recall next to nothing about it except, some undersea sequences, a climax on an Alpine mountain top (which could describe any number of Bond movies) and Julian Glover being the villain. Octopussy is pretty crazy as well, but it has circusses, Maude Adams and Kabir Bedi a.k.a. Sandokan himself. Finally, A View to a Kill is probably my favourite Moore Bond, since it has an Ah-Ha theme song (the Moore Bonds also had excellent theme songs, come to think of it), Grace Jones being awesome, Christopher Walken being villainous, a chase on the Eiffel Tower, which left me so disappointed, once I saw the real thing (But it’s so packed. You can barely move, let alone have a chase scene here) and a climax involving a zeppelin and the Golden Gate Bridge. So really, what’s not to love?

Roger Moore’s Bond movies are also the furthest from Ian Fleming’s original version of the character, though I didn’t realise that, until I started tracking down the original Bond novels in the 1990s. Nonetheless, I find them a lot more rewatchable than the Brosnan and Craig Bonds, probably because even at their worst and most bizarre, the Moore Bonds are always incredibly entertaining. And due to Roger Moore’s suave and ever so slightly tongue in cheek portrayal, his James Bond is a lot closer to Brett Sinclair and Simon Templar than Brosnan’s ever was to Remington Steele. Though my favourite Bond movie is and will always be On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Yes, I know I’m weird.

Talking of which, Roger Moore’s suave, tongue-in-cheek Bond may always seem as if nothing could faze him, but he has unexpected moments of vulnerability that were rarely seen in the character (as opposed to book Bond) all the way up to Daniel Craig era. There is a scene in one of the early Moore Bonds, where Bond is seen visiting the grave of his wife Tracy, who got murdered by Blofeld on their honeymoon. And when Barbara Bach’s Agent Triple X mentions Bond’s late wife in The Spy Who Loved Me, he cuts her off. Because talking about Tracy is just too painful. I have always hated how the later Bond films dismissed Tracy, even though she was the one woman Bond was willing to marry (and played by Diana Rigg a.k.a. Emma Peel herself) and presumably died while carrying his child, so seeing her acknowledged, however slightly, is good. And the only Bond movies that did acknowldge her were Roger Moore’s

Of course, Roger Moore, was much more than just Ivanhoe, Simon Templar, Brett Sinclair and James Bond. By all accounts, he was lovely and modest in person and also worked tirelessly as an ambassador for Unicef in his later years.

Finally, here is one of my all-time favourite Roger Moore moments from The Muppets Show, where Moore sings “Talk to the Animals” from Doctor Doolittle, which was of course Ian Fleming’s most famous non-Bond work (and how amazing is it that the producers of The Muppets not only knew this, but assumed their audience did, too), while fighting rival spies:

And of course Miss Piggy (who had a really great taste in men – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Christophr Reeves, Nathan Fillion, Roger Moore – though I wonder what she saw in Kermit) tried to seduce him:

So rest in peace, Sir Roger Moore, who played James Bond in more movies than any other actor. Though he’ll always be Brett Sinclair to me.

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A few words on the 2016 Nebula Awards, the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Awards and the Shadow Clarkes

Yesterday, the winners of the 2016 Nebula Awards were announced. You can find a full list of winners plus plenty of photos of the ceremony here at File 770. Joel Cunningham also offers a brief overview of the ceremony as well as a list of winners and nominees at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

Back in February, when the 2016 Nebula Awards shortlist was announced, I wrote that it was a very good shortlist. This shortlist produced a set of very worthy winners, too, though most of them were not my personal favourites.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders wins in the novel category. It’s not an unsurprising winner, since the novel got a lot of buzz from the time it was released on. It also was one of two clear favourites, since both Everfair and Borderline are more niche works and The Obelisk Gate is a sequel to a novel which did not win the Nebula last year. Nonetheless, I expected Ninefox Gambit to win, though Ceridwen Christensen at the B&N blog correctly pegged All the Birds in the Sky as the eventual winner.

Three of the 2016 Nebula nominees in the best novel category are also Hugo finalists this year. Now I’m a Hugo voter this year and thanks to an excellent Hugo shortlist, I currently have three novels duking it out for the number 1 spot on my Hugo ballot. Only one of those three was also a Nebula finalists and it’s not All the Birds in the Sky. Now don’t get me wrong, I did like All the Birds in the Sky, I just didn’t love it the way so many other people apparently did. But then, I never quite got why last year’s Nebula winner in the best novel category Uprooted was so popular either.

On to the novella category, where the winner is Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. Again, it’s a story that has gotten a lot of buzz and coincidentally is also a Hugo finalist. It’s certainly a worthy winner and a story I liked well enough, though once again I didn’t love it like so many others apparently did. I guess a story about a boarding school for children who once visited fantastic worlds, but can’t go back there, does not resonate with me as much as it evidently does with US readers. For while Anglo-American children’s fantasy is chock full of portal stories (Narnia, Oz, Alice in Wonderland), portal fantasies are much rarer in German children’s fantasy. I mean, there is Michael Ende’s Neverending Story and – well, that’s it, basically. So naturally, a novella which explores the aftermath that portal fantasies normally leave out would resonate more with US and UK readers.

The respective winners in all other categories are works I’m at least familiar with. However, the winner in the novelette category, “The Long Fall Up” by William Ledbetter, is a complete unknown to me, probably because the story first appeared in F&SF and print SFF mags are notoriously difficult to come by here in Germany. Greg Hullender has a summary and a mini-review at Rocket Stack Rank. Based on this, it certainly sounds like an interesting story. Coincidentally, “The Long Fall Up” is not just the only Nebula win for the big three print magazines this year, it’s also the only clear science fiction story among all the winners in the fiction categories. And those who worry that women and people of colour are taking over all the genre awards will be pleased that the author is a white man.

The winner in the best short story category is “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar. Once more, this is a story that got a lot of buzz and coincidentally is also a Hugo finalist in this category. And once again it’s a story that’s perfectly fine and certainly a worthy winner, but not really one that wowed me (I’m sensing a theme here). In many ways, my reaction to “Seasons of Glass and Iron” is similar to my reaction to the controversial 2014 Nebula winner in this category, “If you were a dinosaur, my love” by Rachel Swirsky. I can absolutely see why so many other people love this story – however, I don’t love it myself (though I liked “Seasons of Glass and Iron” quite a bit more than “If you were a dinosaur, my love”). Part of the reason is that – as I’ve said several times before – fairy tale retellings and new fairy tales rarely do it for me. And while “Seasons of Glass and Iron” is beautifully written, it’s also very predictable.

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic presentation goes to Arrival. Once again, this is hardly an unexpected winner, since Arrival is exactly the sort of serious science fiction movie that the Nebula and Hugo electorate loves. Plus, it’s based on a Nebula Award winning story by Ted Chiang. What somewhat marrs it for me is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis doesn’t work that way, no matter how many SF authors (not just Ted Chiang, but also Samuel R. Delany and Jack Vance) insist that it does.

The Andre Norton Award for YA SFF goes to Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine. It’s an excellent choice IMO, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it YA and indeed, it’s classified as regular SFF and published by Tor, not a YA publisher. But then, Locus seems to believe that Revenger by Alastair Reynolds is YA, too. And once again those who worry that women and people of colour are taking over the genre will be pleased that the author is a white man who managed to win even in the traditionally heavily female dominated YA category. So rest assured, white men can still win SFF awards in the year 2017.

The Damon Knight Grand Master Award went to Jane Yolen and highly deserved it is, too. The Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award went to Jim Fiscus and the Solstice Award went to Toni Weisskopf and (posthumously) to Peggy Rae Sapienza. Certain quarters will be very pleased with Toni Weisskopf’s win, I’m sure.

Finally, File 770 reports that the Nebulas will add a category for game writing in 2018 or 2019, which will once again please a lot of people.

In other awards news, the shortlist for the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award has been announced as well. It’s a pretty good shortlist, consisting of a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee (Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee), a Hugo nominee, sequel to one of last year’s Clarke Award nominees (A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers), this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction and the literary speculative fiction novel of the year (The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead), a new novel by a former Clarke Award winner (Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan), a new work by an author nominated for multiple BSFA, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards (Central Station by Lavie Tidhar) and a Locus Award nominated novel by an established and talented, but somewhat overlooked writer (After Atlas by Emma Newman). It’s also a nicely diverse shortlist, ranging from space opera and military SF via dystopian fiction to alternate history. The writer demographics are diverse as well – after the debacle of the all male, all white shortlist in 2013, in spite of a jury consisting of several women – and include three men and three women, two writers of colour, at least two LGBT writers and one international writer. At the Guardian, David Barnett also reports on the 2017 Clarke Award shortlist and praises its diversity.

So in short, it’s a good shortlist with lots of interesting works. I have my favourites, of course, but I wouldn’t mind if any of those books won.

Shortly before the official Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist was announced, the Shadow Clarke jury (shadow juries are apparently a thing in the UK, so this is not as presumptuous as it sounds) also announced its personal shortlist. The Shadow Clarke shortlist overlaps with the official shortlist in two points, namely The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and Central Station by Lavie Tidhar. The remaining Shadow nominees are The Power by Naomi Alderman, a critically acclaimed feminist SF novel that would not look out of place on the actual Clarke shortlist, The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley, a somewhat obscure novella that has gotten quite a bit of buzz in the run-up to the Hugos, and two to me unknown quantities, A Field Guide to Reality by Johanna Kavenna and Infinite Ground by Martin MacInnes. Both straddle the border between literary fiction and SF and are therefore representative of the sort of books the Shadow Clarke Jury tends to favour. Diversity count: three women, three men, one writer of colour, one international writer.

Unsurprisingly, the selections of the Shadow Clarke Jury tend towards the literary end of SF. Also unsurprisingly, the members of the Shadow Clarke Jury are not at all happy about the actual Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, as they explain at great length here, even though they got two out of six nominees right, while two more actual Clarke nominees, Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan and Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee, were on the Shadow Jury’s longlist. So their hit rate is not bad at all. Nonetheless, there is a lot of complaining, because the actual Clarke Award shortlist (or at least those books the Shadow Clarke Jury doesn’t like) is too safe, too populist, too commercial (whereas the bestselling, Pulitzer-Prize winning, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama endorsed Underground Railroad apparently isn’t commercial and populist at all), too focussed on core genre works, too YA focussed (whereby YA seems to refer not to actual young adult fiction but to works that focus more on characters and emotions than on ideas) and too much like the Hugos and Nebulas.

They might have a point with the last bit, since IMO the biggest strength of the Arthur C. Clarke Award has always been that it honours books that the Hugos and Nebulas tend to miss, because they sit on the fringes of the genre. And it’s true that in recent years, there has been more overlap between the Clarke Awards and the Hugos and Nebulas. However, it’s not just the Clarke Awards that are changing direction (if indeed they are), but but the Hugos and Nebulas are changing direction as well and increacingly recognizing works one would rarely have found on a Hugo or Nebula shortlist ten or fifteen years ago.

As for the rest of the Shadow Clarke Jury’s complaints, those might be summed up as “The books we liked best weren’t shortlisted”. Well, the works I like best often don’t get shortlisted for genre awards either, let alone win. Since approx. 2010, the Hugo and Nebula shortlists have matched my personal preferences closer than they used to and I’m generally quite happy with the shortlists, puppy shenangigans notwithstanding. Nonetheless, in the four years I’ve been a Hugo nominator now, my favourite SFF novel of the respective year never made the shortlist or even the longlist (though at least one book I nominated always made it). SFF awards reflect the direction the genre as a whole is going in, not our personal preferences. Also, as my somewhat lukewarm reaction to the 2016 Nebula Award winners shows, sometimes the works that win awards are not the ones we’d prefer, even if they’re perfectly fine and worthy winners.

Though I honestly wonder why there is such a vehement dislike for Becky Chambers among the Shadow Clarke Jury and in the UK SFF scene in general? It’s okay not to care for her books, but the way Becky Chambers is singled out as an undeserving finalist and an example of all that’s wrong with contemporary SFF is quite remarkable. Sour grapes that Becky Chambers’ debut novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was not just shortlisted for last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, but also longlisted for last year’s Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, i.e. a literary award, alongside such writers as Anne Enright, Kate Atkinson and Geraldine Brooks? So much for hyper-commercial.

At Lady Business, Renay comments both on the actual Shadow Clarke and the actual Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Unlike the “Sharkes”, Renay is quite happy with the direction the Clarke Award is currently going.

I guess the Shadow Clarke Jury provides another illustration for my “Three Fractions of Speculative Fiction” theory, since the “Sharkes” (which is what the Shadow Clarke Jury members call themselves) are an excellent example of what I’ve called the anti-nostalgic fraction. Coincidentally, they also prove that the anti-nostalgic fraction and the traditionalist fraction can often sound eerily similar in their criticisms of works they don’t like (they also tend to dislike the same works, though for different reasons), even though they would probably never agree on what makes a good book.

Comments are off, since that’s safer with awards posts.

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What is it that makes Space Opera so good?

Tor.com and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog are still running their space opera week event, so I’ll use this as an excuse to talk some more about one of my favourite subgenres.

First of all, we have another list, for at the B&N SFF blog, T.W. O’Brien posts a massive list of fifty-five essential space operas from the past seventy years, from Lensmen and The Star Kings all the way to Ninefox Gambit. It’s a great list which shows how broad and diverse space opera really is and that it’s much more than just manly men doing manly things in space (though there’s plenty of that, too). The writer demographics are much more diverse, too, than those of the almost all-male and all-white I linked to in my last post. The early years are very white and very male, though you also have Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey and Samuel R. Delany in there (though they did miss C.L. Moore, probably because she wrote most of the Northwest Smith stories before the 1937 cut-off point, though Judgment Night would fit in). And the further down you get, the more women and writers of colour appear. Lots of personal favourites are included, too, though I can’t help but notice that Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series and the Dredd Chronicles are sorely missing.

Another really fascinating piece to come out of the space opera week event is Liz Bourke’s post about space opera and the question of empire at Tor.com. Herein, Liz Bourke takes a look at four different space operas, namely David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, David Drake’s RCN series, Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit and sequel, and analyses how these four works tackle the question of empire and imperialism and its social and political implications. She comes to the conclusion that David Weber is mainly interested in military action and does not particularly care about the social and political implications of the universe he built. He also doesn’t question imperialism at all. David Drake (whom I have to admit I keep confusing with David Weber, though I have read books by both) also focusses on military action, but places more emphasis on the political and social implications of imperialism than Weber. on the other end of the spectrum, Ann Leckie and Yoon Ha Lee are far more interested in how their characters deal with questions of identity and position in strictly hierarchical imperialist systems than in big space battles.

Yoon Ha Lee himself makes a similar point in his contribution to space opera week, when he discusses the emphasis the space opera subgenre tends to place on big space battles. Like Liz Bourke, Yoon Ha Lee takes a look at individual works and diagnoses that in Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series and Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker series, the focus is very much on big space battles and other space opera shenangigans rather than on politics and culture (he’s mistaken with regards to Green, though, because there is quite a bit of political commentary embedded in the Deathstalker series together with all the space opera fun Green could squeeze in). Meanwhile, other works such as Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series use the superficial trappings of space opera to make a sociocultural point about the effects of imperialism and the clash of cultures.

Talking of Yoon Ha Lee, Martin Cahill reviews Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee, the sequel to Hugo, Nebula and Clarke Award nominated Ninefox Gambit. I’m not sure if this is just a regular review or a space opera week tie-in, but it certainly fits. There’s also an excerpt from Raven Stratagem at Tor.com.

Now empires and imperialism (and big space battles) seem to come part and parcel with space opera, since the overwhelming majority of space opera presents imperialist powers, even if the actual system is not an empire but a republic or a federation or – rarely – a quasi-communist/socialist state. Even the cheerfully collectivist and anarchist post-scarcity society of Iain Banks’ Culture frequently comes up against the imperialism of less enlightened powers and occasionally engages in a bit of imperialism of their own. Perhaps Ian Sales had a point when he called space opera an inherently rightwing genre, because it tends to default to imperialism, regardless of the writers’ actual politics.

I have to admit that my own attempts at space opera, the Shattered Empire and the In Love and War series, are both set in imperialist systems, an actual empire in the case of Shattered Empire and an empire and a republic, both of which are equally imperialistic, in the case of In Love and War. in both cases, this was due to a worldbuilding necessity. Shattered Empire is my attempt to write the sort of story about an epic struggle against an injust system that permeates much of the SF I love most. And you can’t really have a revolution without an evil empire. Though I didn’t pattern the Fifth Human Empire and its history after such obvious suspects as the Roman Empire, the British Empire or the Napoleonic wars, but instead did what space opera writers have been doing for a long time and used the politics of my own country as a base. The history of the Fifth Human Empire as recounted in History Lesson blatantly borrows from the politics of West Germany post-1945. Interestingly, no one has ever remarked on this, even though the borrowings are very blatant indeed.

For In Love and War, I needed a universe divided between two great powers locked in a generation-spanning war, with the few independent entities squeezed to the margins. In short, it’s basically the Cold War gone hot in space. My initial idea was that the Empire of Worlds is the British Empire on steroids, while the Republic of United Planets is the US at its most expansionist and imperialistic on steroids. However, while I was actually writing the stories, the Empire of Worlds turned into a hierarchical class/caste system that is a lot more strictly stratified than the British Empire ever was at its worst, while the Republic of Worlds turned into a technocracy governed by a body calling itself the Scientific Council. Both systems are extremely nasty, even the supposedly rational, democratic and egalitarian Republic. My protagonists, Anjali and Mikhail both come from the margins of their respective regimes. Anjali is a member of the lowest class from an exploited backwater planet (and remember that so far, we haven’t actually seen any members of the higher classes of the Empire), while Mikhail is a war orphan, an abused throwaway child who was only viewed as a burden on the state to which he lost his family. They both join their respective militaries, the only way out for people like them and manage to occasionally walk the corridors of power, though they never really belong there. See Mikhail pretending to be a guard and fading into the background in Graveyard Shift, while his superiors discuss the fates of human beings over tea and pastries.

When I write, I usually start with the characters or a situation and then build the world or the universe to fit. This is what I did with both Shattered Empire and In Love and War, both of which are set in imperialistic universes by ncessity.

Talking of worldbuilding, Kameron Hurley, who also has a post at Tor.com in which she explains how she created her space opera universe for The Stars Are Legion. I always enjoy posts where authors explain how they created their worlds and what was the initiating spark for a given novel or series, especially since it’s often something that didn’t strike me as very memorable when I read the books in question. Now I haven’t read The Stars Are Legion yet, but here is a similar post by Charles Stross about how he created the world of Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Now I read both books back in the day and found them immensely frustrating (and indeed they’re part of the reason I have issues with New British Space Opera, as chronicled here). However, when I read Charles Stross’ post about the building the universe of those books, I found that even though I’d read them and remembered my whole frustration with them very well indeed, I had very little memory of this whole Eschaton stuff, because frankly, I didn’t find it very interesting (and that was before I discovered that it was heavily borrowed from Iain Banks’ Culture novels). But then, my own writing process is different, as described above.

Talking of the Culture novels, also at Tor.com, Karin L. Kross celebrates Iain M. Banks, the Culture novels and their revolutionary optimism. Now I have to admit that I’m not the world’s biggest Iain Banks fan. That’s more my fault than his, because I came across other New British space opera strongly influenced by Banks before I finally read my first Culture novel. And since I did not care for what I’d seen of New British space opera, I never gave Iain Banks a fair shot, because I always associated him with those books. Things might well have been different if I’d found Banks before I found his immitators.

In another Tor.com post, Molly Templeton shares her appreciation for the Lightless series by C.A. Higgins, which I haven’t read. Other offerings for space opera week include Leah Schnelbach revisiting Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, a space opera which hinges on linguistics. I enjoyed Babel-17 a lot, when I first read it, largely for the combination of space opera and James Bond-style spy thriller. Though the linguistics aspect – sorry – is bunk. I know SF authors love the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, love it more than actual linguists, in fact (well, how could you not love a hypothesis that sounds as if it was cooked up by two Klingon linguists), but it’s a hypothesis and even if you accept it, no real world language will ever do what language can do in Babel-17 or Poul Anderson’s Tau-Ceti or Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” a.k.a. Arrival. I understand the fascination – hey, part of the reason why I chose sociology as my secondary subject at university was my love for Asimov’s Foundation series. But actually studying the stuff – both sociology and linguistics (I even taught the latter at the University of Vechta and wrote a paper on linguistics and SF) – tends to show you that neither sociology nor language actually work that way in the real world, anymore than FTL travel is possible in the real world.

Tor.com also reprints the space opera/military SF short story “Damage” by David D. Levine, narrated from the POV of an artificially intelligent fighter supposed to carry out the final strike in an interplanetary war. “Damage” was a Nebula finalist in 2016 and was also on my personal Hugo nomination ballot that year. It’s also a very poignant story.

Meanwhile, over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, Ross Johnson shares a list of ten space operas in comic and graphic novel form. It’s a pretty good list, though heavy on recent works. I mean, a list of space opera comics that omits Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers? Really? None of Jack Kirby’s many space opera comics make the list either, though the Green Lantern Corps gets a mention. The list is very US dominated, while largely ignoring European and Japanese comics. Valerian and Laureline get a mention, but they’re far from the only space opera found in Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics. Meanwhile, manga is omitted altogether. At Tor.com, Natalie Zutter takes a closer look at Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’ multiple-award-winning Saga, one of the space opera comics on the B&N list, and how it focusses more on building a family and the theme of hope than on big space battles, even though Saga is chock-full of space opera weirdness.

Also at Barnes & Noble, Sarah Gailey offers book recommendations to what may well be the only actual opera diva in space opera, the tentacled and blue diva Plavalaguna from Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. It seems Plavalaguna likes YA fiction, which is unexpected. Or maybe not, since opera thrives on drama and modern YA has plenty of that. Besides, my time of peak opera love was in my teens (So dramatic! So romantic! So thrilling! And music, too), so Plavalaguna, prime opera diva of the galaxy*, loving YA fiction makes an unexpected amount of sense.

Tor.com offers another excellent contribution to space opera week with Emily Asher-Perrin’s post tackling the frequent accusation that space opera is just fantasy set in space (as opposed to proper hard science fiction). She pretty much answers that question in the negative in the headline and then goes on to trace the history of the term “space opera” and how it went from derogatory description of a certain kind of science fiction story to subgenre designation. Emily Asher-Perrin also points out that space opera initially wasn’t compared to the fantasy genre at all, probably because there was no fantasy genre in the modern sense before the 1960s/1070s. Instead, the genres space opera found itself negatively compared to were the soap opera and the western a.k.a. the horse opera, which is turn received their monickers via a negative view of the melodramatic plots of some operas (which still persists – I’ve seen interviews with opera directors in which they complained about the melodramatic and silly plots of many classics).

Coincidentally, the overblown melodrama was a large part of what I loved (and still love) about actual opera. What initially drew my teenaged self to opera was that it combined two things I loved, namely music and stories, gloriously wild and exciting stories full of court intrigue and swordfights, deadly feuds, crossdressing and disguise, forbidden love, betrayal, dashing heroism, sacrifice, prison escapes, torture, executions, suicides, disastrous mix-ups (I can offhand name three operas where someone winds up killing their lover or child in an easily prevented mix-up), devastating tragedies, grand gestures of mercy, dramatic dying arias and much more. I still don’t get why there are concert productions of operas, because to me, the stories are as important as the music, so concert productions omit what to me is the best part of opera (and I was a kid who read opera libretti for entertainment). Of course, stage productions often don’t deliver either, since many directors are uncomfortable with the melodramatic plots of many operas and either try to subvert them or try to find some political or social relevance in them. Bonus points, if they take an opera that actually could have relevance to current affairs and somehow manage to twist a meaning from it that totally misses the obvious, e.g. Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio (a personal favourite of mine) could be turned into a great commentary on relations between Islam and the West, so of course the director has to turn it into a treatise on the sex trade. Or Beethoven’s Fidelio, an opera about a political prisoner and his wife’s desperate attempt to free him, i.e. a story which can be so easily related to current affairs, is instead turned into a parable on deindustrialisation and mass unployment, complete with the chorus dressed up as stereotyped unemployed workers lugging discount store shopping bags across the stage, as happened in a production at the Bremen theatre in the 1990s. And of course, Bayreuth is infamous for Wagner productions that completely miss the point.

If you take a look at the plot elements that so thrilled me about classic operas that I listed above, you’ll notice that you can find many of them in both soap operas and space operas. Viewed in that light, it’s probably no surprise that my teenaged self which loved operas also enjoyed soap operas. And of course, I also loved space opera, fantasy and superhero comics, all of which I’ve been known to describe as “It’s like a soap opera, but with swordfights and dragons/with superpowers/in space”.

So while the affinity between opera proper, space opera, soap opera and epic fantasy is clearly visible, I recall that the comparison between space opera and westerns (or indeed anyone of the others and westerns) has always stumped me, because with obvious exceptions such as Firefly and Serenity, I don’t see a whole lot of similarities between space opera and westerns, at least not enough to call refer to space operas as “westerns in space”. Besides, like Emily Asher-Perrin, I have never much cared for the western genre or rather I disliked certain prominent elements of westerns so much that they turned me off the entire genre. Therefore, I was always stunned, whenever someone compared the genre I loved most to the genre I loved least, because wasn’t it obviously to anybody with half an eye that these two weren’t the same at all.

Though the question remains why I love space opera so much more than e.g. epic fantasy. The answer was always pretty clear to me. For while you can get your fix of the good stuff – adventure, love, heroics, wondrous worlds, conflict on a grand scale – in various genres, I have always preferred my fantasy with indoor plumbing. That’s why I prefer both urban fantasy, steampunk and science fiction, including space opera, over epic fantasy.

Meanwhile, the puppies or at least some of them are still pissed that they weren’t invited to the party (gee, I wonder why?), so they started their own space opera week event. All links go to archive.is, in case you’re worried about visiting a puppy site.

Jon Del Arroz complains that he is being oppressed and censored, because Tor.com moderators deleted his comments in which he promoted one of his posts at the Castalia House blog and also deleted the comments his friends left that called for Tor.com to give Del Arroz a guest post. He also quite grandiosely declares himself an important space opera writer and the leading Hispanic voice in science fiction (I guess Ann Aguirre and Malka Older might have a few words to say about that). Dude, it’s not censorship if moderators delete self-promoting posts, since I’m pretty sure Tor.com does not allow any self-promotion in comments.

Over at the Castalia House blog, Dominika Lein declares that space opera requires sense of wonder and should never be mundane, while Misha Burnett declares that space opera should follow the rules of myth and uses Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 as an example. Benjamin Cheah, who had a short story on the 2016 Hugo ballot, also weighs in on his own blog and declares that space opera should be grand and operatic and focus on adventure rather than on realism and details of mundane life. And at Superversive SF, Corey McCleary declares that “real readers/viewers” (TM) want action and adventure and heroics and not mundane realism and uses the box office figures of various recent Hollywood movies to prove his point. Ironically, he lumps American Sniper**, a film biography of a real life sniper with the US military, in on the action, adventure and heroics side (well, the movie does not question the questionable actions of its protagonist at all), while La La Land, a candy-coloured musical about two young people looking for Hollywood stardom and finding love instead, gets classified as mundane realism. Dude, these words don’t mean what you think they do. Meanwhile, at Tales of the Rampant Coyote, Jay Barnston explains what space opera means to him (sense of wonder, action and adventure, larger than life settings and characters, thrilling heroics). Barnston also shares a quote by Leigh Brackett on space opera and how it endures, when all the “important” science fiction has faded. Now I adore Leigh Brackett’s fiction, but her comments on writing and genre have never impressed me. Never mind that the reason why Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark stories and her Mars stories are still read today, while many of her contemporaries have faded away is because they offered something more (great characters and dialogue, mainly, cause Brackett was also a top-motch screenwriter) than just adventure in space.

Interestingly, several of the puppy contributions to space opera week specifically take issue with Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer’s post on the underrated importance of ordinary daily life in space opera, which they somehow read as “Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer hates space opera [No, she doesn’t. After all, she does the Vorkosigan reread series at Tor.com and you don’t do a reread with commentary of a genre you hate] and wants to take away our fun [Dudes, no one wants to take away your fun. We simply want something different out of the genre].”

The puppy contributions to space opera week also clearly show that they have a fairly narrow view of the subgenre, one that focusses on sense of wonder, thrilling action and adventure, larger than life heroics, usually of the military kind, a strict good and evil dichotomy and traditional gender roles. Now there’s nothing wrong about that and indeed, many of the Tor.com and B&N posters also declared their love for works that did just that, featuring heroic people, usually but not always male, being heroic in space. However – and this is something the various puppies and puppy adjacents don’t get – space opera can be more than just manly space marines (and occasionally feminine space princesses) doing manly things in space. To some people, the seemingly mundane interactions between realistic characters in decidedly non-realistic and non-mundane settings are as much as, if not more fun than the big space battles. And the beauty of the space opera genre is that it can accomodate all of those stories from the great space battles of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet to the small scale learning to the be human stories of Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit.

Comments are off. Puppies, whine elsewhere.

*Or maybe not, since one of the oldest surviving characters I’ve created is an immortal telepathic singer with a taste for opera. Since she’s immortal and has access to a time machine, she can literally pop up everywhere, and may well put in a guest appearance in the Shattered Empire series (The Empire has operas. You know they do) or the In Love and War series (The Empire definitely has opera and the Republic probably does, too) one day. She may even meet the Silencer one day, because hey, time travel.

**By the way, it’s fascinating that the same actor, Bradley Cooper both plays the lead in the hyper-propagandistic American Sniper and provides the voice for Rocket Raccoon in the cheerfully anarchistic found-family space opera adventure Guardians of the Galaxy and that he played both roles in the same year.

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Space Opera – It’s not just for white men anymore (and never was in the first place)

Tor.com is currently hosting a space opera week in conjunction with the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. This is a good thing, particularly for those like me who love space opera. And coincidentally, the Tor.com intro post links to the same Wired article by Charlie Jane Anders I used as a jumping off point for my own post about the current space opera boom last month.

However, Tor.com’s space opera week was not off to a good start, because literally the first post in the week-long event is this list of ten classic space opera universes by Alan Brown. If you’ll click over to the list, you’ll immediately notice one glaring issue with it, namely that it’s very white and very male. Brown’s list contains a meagre half woman (since Sharon Lee is one half of a husband/wife writing team) and not a single writer of colour. Coincidentally, the majority of the white dude authors listed also tend towards the right of the political spectrum.

Now the overwhelming whiteness and maleness of that list might at least partly be blamed on the fact that it’s intended to be a list of classic space opera, i.e. space opera dating from a time where SF was a lot more white and male than today. Besides, Alan Brown normally reviews vintage science fiction (and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) for Tor.com, so his specialty are older works. But even if you only confine the list to works that are older than twenty years, there are plenty of women you could include and even a handful of writers of colour. So even the remit of classic space opera is no excuse for an all-white and almost all male list.

However, if you actually look at the list, it does not solely include include Golden Age writers like Heinlein and Poul Anderson and works from the 1970s/80s/90s like Babylon 5, the Liaden Universe series, the Niven/Pournelle collaborations or the David Brin, Gregory Benford and Vernor Vinge books. The first book in Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series came out in 2006, i.e. firmly in the 21st century. And the first book in Michael Flynn’s space opera series came out in 2012*. So if 21st century works are eligible, then there really is no excuse for such a skewed list.

Of course, this list is merely one person’s opinion, Alan Brown. And of course, such lists are by definition personal favourites. And if Alan Brown’s personal favourites are overwhelmingly white and male, then that’s the way it is (and looking at the classic SF novels he reviewed for Tor.com, there is a strong male and white bias there, too). However, when compiling a list of “N books about X/in subgenre Y” for broader public consumption (i.e. not posted on a personal blog, where anything goes), it’s always worth asking yourself, “Does this list skew towards a particular demographic (often straight white men, but not always**)? And is there anything I can do to make it more inclusive?”

For example, whenever I compile Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month or the weekly link round-up for the Speculative Fiction Showcase or the weekly link round-up at the new Indie Crime Scene (well, there only is one so far), I always check whether it skews in a certain direction, i.e. do I have mainly science fiction and hardly any fantasy or vice versa, do I have mainly women or men, is there anything not white and western included at all? And if the answer is, yes, the round-up skews in one direction, I take steps to remedy that. That is, if I have mainly space opera, I actively look for some fantasy to include. If I have mainly books by men, I actively look for books by women, or vice versa. If everything is white and western, I actively look for books or authors that aren’t. I also usually try to include at least one LGBT book in every Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month round-up. And after doing this for a while, it turns out that the round-ups are becoming naturally more diverse. Coincidentally, I also find that I get more diverse submissions both to the Speculative Fiction Showcase and to the Indie Crime Scene, which I suspect is at least partly because the link round-ups and new release round-ups indicate that we’re open to diverse voices. So in short, making your lists of “N book about X/in subgenre Y” more diverse can absolutely be done.

Now Alan Brown explicitly states that his list of classic space opera universes is by no means complete and that he could have included dozens more. And to be fair, he also says in the comments that he would have included Lois McMaster Bujold, but found her work amply discussed at Tor.com already, so he decided to focus on lesser discussed works. Still, were there no works by women among those dozens? No works by writers of colour? And even if he didn’t want to kick anything of his list of ten favourites, could he maybe have expanded the list to twelve or fifteen and included more women and writers of colour?

Now recommendation lists and “best of” lists that are almost entirely white and male are sadly nothing new in the genre. Meanwhile, lists that do the opposite, such as Lady Business‘ list of sixty essential SFF reads, that consists entirely of women and writers of colour with a single token white man included (John Scalzi), or James Davis Nicoll’s “Twenty core books in subgenre X that every SFF fan should have on their shelves” lists, which are comprised mainly of women and writers of colour with maybe a token white male or two included, do attract their share of controversy along the lines of “But I don’t know/haven’t read those books. Am I not a real fan?” and “Well, I have never heard of those authors and anyway, those are not the books that ‘real fans’ (TM) of subgenre X like.”

So let’s look at some of the other posts in Tor.com and Barnes & Noble‘s space opera week and see if they do better than Alan Brown’s unfotunate attempt. At the Barnes & Noble SFF blog, the aptly named Sam Reader compiles a list of six comedic space operas that includes two women (Becky Chambers and Lois McMaster Bujold), one international writer (Hannu Rajaniemi) and at least one LGBT writer (Becky Chambers), so that one does a lot better. The books are also pretty good, though to be fair, Alan Brown’s list includes a couple of pretty good works as well.

Meanwhile, whoever is in charge of Tor.com (Irene Gallo, as far as I know) realised the problems with Alan Brown’s heavily male skewing list, because on the very same day, Tor.com also published this post by Judith Tarr (who definitely belongs on any “great space operas by women writers” list) entitled “Yes, women have always written space opera” (Damn right, they have), which aims to set the record straight.

It’s a great post – much better than Alan Brown’s. The problem, Judith Tarr, diagnoses is not that women haven’t written science fiction in general and space opera in particular, cause they have been writing it all the time, but that women writers tend to be forgotten by subsequent generations, are reprinted far less frequently and rarely show up on “best of” lists (Alan Brown’s list of classic space opera is but one example). Judith Tarr writes:

That’s what happens with women writers. In each generation, one is chosen to be named on all the lists and cited by all the Serious People. Once she’s selected, the Serious People dust off their hands and say, “There. We have a female. That’s sorted.” And go right back to focusing on male writers and ignoring the rest of the females.

As a result, there are a handful of female SF writers, one per generation, who are the token women on otherwise all-male lists. Judith Tarr names Ursula K. Le Guin, Lois McMaster Bujold and Ann Leckie as the token women of their respective generations, while everybody else is erased or forgotten. Coincidentally, the mechanism is very similar for writers of colour. There is one token SFF writer of colour per generation (Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, N.K. Jemisin); the rest are forgotten.

Judith Tarr even manages to link the erasure of women (and writers of colour) back to space opera by comparing the forgotten women of SFF to the mri, a race of matrilineal alien warriors, from C.J. Cherryh’s The Faded Sun trilogy, whose fate it is to be betrayed by their former masters and nigh exterminated again and again. It’s certainly a poignant analogy.

The comments are also well worth checking out (except for a few examples of classic mansplaining), because they are chock full of recommendations for space operas written by women. And of you want even more, Sandstone has started a massive Twitter thread recommending space opera by women.

At the Castalia House blog, Jeffro Johnson responds to Judith Tarr’s post and agrees that yes, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton are not as well remembered as they should be, before he launches into his hobby horse how Campbellian science fiction suppressed pre-1940 pulp SF. Whatever one thinks of his thesis, it doesn’t apply to Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton, because Brackett only started publishing in 1940 and Andre Norton’s SFF output dates mainly from the 1950 and 1960s and beyond.

The rest of B&N and Tor.com‘s space opera week posts to date are also much better than Alan Brown’s unfortunate inaugural post. Renay Williams offers an introduction to John Scalzi’s works at Tor.com, while T.W. O’Brien discusses the theme of immortality and longevity in space opera at Barnes & Noble. The authors O’Brien discusses are all white and male (Frank Herbert, Joe Haldeman, Alastair Reynolds and Iain Banks respectively), though he does mention Ann Leckie and Liu Cixin in passing.

Tor.com also ran two complementary posts on the quieter domestic and quotidien side of space opera. Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer discusses the underrated importance of ordinary, everyday life in many space operas, while Liz Bourke talks about space opera and the politics of domesticity. Both posts are very good and point at the many small details of (human) life that are often lost among the grand space battles and clashing fleets of space opera. Coincidentally, both posts also discuss solely female authors. Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer focusses on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series with a cursory mention of Anne McCaffrey, while Liz Bourke praises the domestic and intimate space opera of Becky Chambers, Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe stories and C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. And of course, you promptly get someone (male, going by the handle) declaring in the comments that those books are not space opera, because they are too introspective and don’t have enough action, which is an example of spectacularly missing the point of that whole post.

My own attempts at space opera, the Shattered Empire series and the In Love and War series, also focus on quieter and more intimate moments to the point that I sometimes have to remind myself to add some action. Seedlings is about gardening, History Lesson is basically two people talking at night about the history of the universe they live in, Conspirators features people talking about politics in a succession of restaurants, interrupted by the occasional fire fight. Meanwhile, in Dreaming of the Stars we encounter Anjali and Mikhail as teenagers and see what made them become the people they are. Courting Trouble follows them going grocery shopping and finding trouble along the way. And while Graveyard Shift is a story about a massive disaster in space, it also has plenty of scenes of people going shopping, working the dull nightshift on the bridge of a battlecruiser and handing out death sentences over tea and pastries. My space operas focus on characters and their relationships. They’re full of romance, of friendship, of family (it’s probably telling that both Ethan from Shattered Empire and Mikhail from In Love and War are mourning the loss of their homeworlds and their families), of food. This is also why my books tend to get lost among the deluge of books about manly space marines doing manly things in space that has taken over the space opera category (and pretty much all science fiction categories) at Amazon. However, I can only write my own stories, the stories I want to tell and not the stories “the market” supposedly wants.

Meanwhile over in puppyland, some of SF’s least favourite dogs are not at all happy that Tor.con is having a space opera week and didn’t invite them to the party (Gee, I wonder why that might be). It all began when Jon del Arroz, an author who has recently attached himself to the puppies, posted several comments at Tor.com, offering to write a guest post for their space opera week event and declaring that unlike those evil SJWs at Tor.com, the puppies over at the Castalia House blog have not forgotten pulp era women writers like C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton, but are actually discussing them (which is correct, at least as far as Brackett and Moore are concerned). Next, he started a fight on Twitter with Paul Weimer (whom he ironically was trying to get to review his upcoming novel – hint, if you want someone to review your book, insulting them is not really helpful) and Bridget McKinney of SF Bluestocking (chronicled by Mike Glyer at File 770). And when both of them refused to acknowledge not just the greatness of Jon Del Arroz, but also had to gall to call Anne McCaffrey’s works outdated, he retreated to his blog to rant about how those nasty SJWs are busily trying to erase Anne McCaffrey, because they want to erase the history of the genre altogether. Someone at the Superversive SF blog (ETA: according to File 770, it’s J. Jagi Lamplighter) also picks up the thread and bemoans Anne McCaffrey’s impending erasure at the hands of those evil SJWs.

Now complaining that SJWs are attempting to erase the genre’s past and are somehow suppressing those pulp era and golden age authors most of us read as teenagers is a thing in the “Pulp Revolution” corner of puppyland. They’re usually wrong, of course, but talking about books they enjoy is a lot more productive than messing with the Hugos, so more power to them. As for Anne McCaffrey, not only is she not in any real danger of erasure, unlike some of her female contemporaries, she also is and will remain an important figure in the history of science fiction. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award and her work left its mark on a generation of readers.

However, Anne McCaffrey’s work was very much of its time (the 1960s and 1970s) and hasn’t aged well. Some of the problems – consent issues in the Pern series, the ableism in The Ship Who Sang, forced sterilization in Pegasus in Flight, the borderline squicky age differences and adult men falling in love with teenagers in Damia and Too Ride Pegasus and again, Pern, the pervasive classism in Pern and Crystal Singer and well, everywhere – were already apparent by the time I discovered her work in the late 1980s and have only become more notable since then. While I was working on my MA thesis, I came across Anne McCaffrey’s essay in Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow: A Discursive Symposium, edited by Reginald Bretnor and reviewed by James Davis Nicoll here. In that essay, Anne McCaffrey recounted how difficult it was to sneak a sex scene past John W. Campbell in her story “A Womanly Talent” back in 1969 and how revolutionary and feminist that story was at the time. And I was stunned, because while I read “A Womanly Talent” as part of the To Ride Pegasus fix-up/collection, I didn’t remember any sex scene in it at all. Coincidentally, “A Womanly Talent” was the only story in To Ride Pegasus I disliked, because while all the men got to do cool stuff with their psi-powers like push spaceships through space, Ruth got the power to manipulate genes and used it to make a blonde and blue-eyed baby. Screw that shit, my teenaged self thought. I wanted to push spaceships through space, not make blonde and blue-eyed babies. If Ruth had at least done something useful like eliminate a heriditary disease instead.

I read To Ride Pegasus sometime around 1989/1990, i.e. about twenty years after “A Womanly Talent” first appeared in Analog. And in those twenty years, that story has gone from daringly feminist and subversive to pretty outdated. Come to think of it, the final story in To Ride Pegasus, “A Bridle for Pegasus” about an emotion-manipulating singer inciting riots would probably be hugely problematic these days as well, though I recall liking it a whole lot at the time. Coincidentally, there is a great discussion about Anne McCaffrey and her work going on in the comments at File 770, where plenty of people also weigh in on how her books were both revolutionary and feminist for their time and yet problematic.

Jon del Arroz also takes issue with Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer’s post linked above and complains that Tor.com has only hired writers who hate space opera for their space opera week. Of course, neither Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer nor Liz Bourke nor Judith Tarr hate space opera, they merely have different tastes than del Arroz. And since Tor.com did not respond to del Arroz’s offer to write a guest post for them, he instead decided to post his list of five definitive space operas at the Superversive SF blog. It’s not even a bad list (okay, so I can’t stand Hyperion and Lensman was horribly dated even back when I first read them more than twenty years ago) and del Arroz manages to include more women than Alan Brown.

Del Arroz also shows up again at the Castalia House blog, once again bemoaning that the publishing establishment in general and Tor in particular hate space opera and that they are killing the genre via insisting on realism. Because “real fans” (TM) want exploding spaceships in space and manly space marines doing manly things in space. Well, if that’s what you like, Amazon has you covered, if subgenre bestseller lists full of thinly veiled variations of the same story told over and over again are any indication. However, not all of us are interested in manly space marines and heroic but disgraced fleet captains doing manly and heroic things in space, at least not in umpteen different variations.

The great thing about space opera is that it is such a broad canvas. It can be manly space marines doing manly things in space and heroic but disgraced fleet captains who are the only ones who can save humanity from the insectoid or reptilian aliens, but it can also be so much more. It can be the new British space opera pioneered by Iain Banks and continued by the likes of Alastair Reynolds and on occasion Charles Stross. It can be the political parable and the everything and the kitchen sink, too, approach of Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker series. It can be the gender-blind and tea-loving universe of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radsch series. It can be the family saga meets space opera meets half a dozen other genres of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. It can be the mental chess games and heretical calendrical rot of Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit. It can be the focus on culture and family of Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya stories. It can be the slyly subversive female protagonists of Rachel Bach’s Paradox trilogy, Ann Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax series and Sara Creasy Scarabaeus duology. It can be the cheerful anarchy and the found families of Guardians of the Galaxy. And it can be the cozy space opera universes of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit.

Space opera is big enough for all of us, so let’s keep it that way.

Comments are off. Puppies, whine elsewhere.

*Coincidentally, I only associate Flynn with that post-apocalyptic novelette the Sad Puppies gamed onto the Hugo shortlist three years ago, which made no real sense, because it was only one installment in a serial and one that did not stand very well alone. I wasn’t even aware that Flynn wrote space opera as well.

**When I compile such a list based purely on favourites, it’s just as likely to consist overwhelmingly of women, so I often have to explicitly remind myself to include men.

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Introducing the Indie Crime Scene

Many of you will know that in addition to this blog and the Pegasus Pulp blog, I also co-run the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a blog for all things indie SFF, together with Jessica Rydill.

Talking of which, I totally forgot to mention that Jessica and I have been interviewed at Joshua Pantalleresco’s Just Joshing podcast last month, where we talk about our books and our writing as well as about the Speculative Fiction Showcase. You can listen to the episode in question here.

Anyway, this weekend I was getting Kitchen Witch, the next Helen Shepherd Mystery, ready for publication. I went looking for places to promote the new release, basically for the crime and mystery equivalent of the Speculative Fiction Showcase. However, I found nothing along those lines. So I thought, “Hey, why don’t I just create my own crime and mystery promo site?” And so the Indie Crime Scene was born.

So what is the Indie Crime Scene? Eventually, I hope that it will become for the crime, mystery and thriller genres what the Speculative Fiction Showcase is for SFF, a place where you can look up new indie releases and read author interviews. There’ll be a regular link round-up as well.

What sort of books will the Indie Crime Scene feature? As explained here, my definition of crime fiction is fairly broad and encompasses not just classic mysteries, from cozy to hardboiled, and detective fiction, but also noir, suspense, both romantic and otherwise, and thrillers.

I’ve already had some submissions and the first new release spotlight will be posted tomorrow. So if you’re interested in mysteries, crime fiction and thrillers, check out the Indie Crime Scene.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for April 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 February 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, epic fantasy, Asian fantasy, dystopian fiction, Cyberpunk, space opera, military science fiction, science fiction western, science fiction romance, paranormal romance, horror, dragons, werewolves, third twins, mindjackers, bounty hunters, FBI witches, alien invasions, galactic empires, intergalactic animal rescues, genetically engineered tiger supersoldiers 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:

The Rogue Prince by Lindsay Buroker

Starseer, pilot, and animal lover Jelena Marchenko wants to prove to her parents that she’s ready to captain her own freighter and help run the family business. When she finally talks them into getting a second ship and letting her fly it, it doesn’t faze her that the craft is decades old and looks like a turtle. This is the chance she’s craved for years.

But it’s not long before the opportunity to rescue mistreated lab animals lures her from her parentally approved cargo run and embroils her in a battle between warring corporations. To further complicate matters, her childhood friend Thorian, prince of the now defunct Sarellian Empire, is in trouble with Alliance law and needs her help.

Torn between her duty to her family and doing what she believes is honorable, Jelena is about to learn that right and wrong are never as simple as they appear and that following your heart can get you killed.

[image error] Broken Wolf by Stacy Claflin:

The wolf essence stone—finding it could free werewolves from the curse of the moon. Or it could kill them all.

Victoria has burned with “the fever” to find the stone since hearing about it. Hundreds of werewolves before her have died in the quest. That legacy doesn’t deter her, though. She’s willing to risk anything to find the stone and break the curse that forces them to shift every full moon. Her obsession compels her to travel to Iceland, where she feels the stone calling to her. Pulling her toward it. If only she knew the ancient evil residing inside.

Toby fears the changes in his beloved Victoria. He sets out to find the one person who might be able to help—Soleil, a Valkyrie with incredible power and vast knowledge about essence stones. But even she may not be enough to stop the carnage Victoria is about to set loose on the world.

Victoria has a strong connection to both the stone and danger behind it. Will she be able to end the curse of the moon, or will the stone destroy them all?

USA Today bestselling author, Stacy Claflin, brings you Broken Wolf, the fourth book in the Curse of the Moon series. It’s a paranormal romantic suspense saga that features gripping supernatural drama, surprising twists, dynamic characters, and heart-pounding romance. For the best reading experience, follow the series in order.

[image error] Eye of the Tiger by Michael-Scott Earle:

Imprisoned and subjected to brutal genetic experiments, space marine Adam has been changed into a perfect predator. A super soldier that is part man, part tiger, and all killing machine.

When his latest mission has an unexpected outcome, Adam finds himself free of his explosive control collar and honor bound to protect a mysterious woman. Now he is on an alien planet, and they are both being hunted by the most powerful mega corporation in the solar system. Their only escape lays at the helm of an experimental starship hidden beyond countless layers of military security.

All Adam has is his military training, sense of honor, and a beautiful woman who needs to drink blood to live.

It is time to let the tiger out.

[image error] Scions of the Star Empire: Scandal by Athena Grayson

When a princess who’s no stranger to scandal runs afoul of the secrets of the most powerful cabal on Landfall, even her crown can’t protect her from the consequences.

They can have anything they want…except a future.

Nothing infuriates Princess Ione Ra more than having someone else take control of her reputation from her, and her old nemesis–gossip journalist Jaris Pulne–is poised to do just that with pilfered pics of her caught in a compromising position with her power-couple partner. As someone who’s no stranger to manipulating the markets on her own social life, Ione knows the wrong scandal means social suicide.

Privilege is a prison…

For the other half of the power couple, Den Hades, his survival has depended on staying in his powerful father’s shadow in order to protect his secrets. But on the very night of his one chance to earn a shot at becoming a Scion–and freedom from his father’s ambitions, scandal threatens to tear him from Ione, or worse–force them together before their time.

[image error] Symphony of Fates by J.C. Kang:

Kaiya escapes her ordeal at the hands of the Teleri Emperor, only to return to a homeland beset by enemies on all sides, and crumbling from within.

As a teenager, she quelled a rebellion with the Dragon Scale Lute. As a young adult, she vanquished a dragon with the power of her voice.

Now, robbed of her magic by grief, Kaiya must navigate a web of court intrigue to save the realm before it falls. Only she can lay claim to the Dragon Throne on behalf of her unborn sons—whether the father is the lover who perished rescuing her, or the hated enemy who killed him.

In the final story in Kaiya’s saga, she must rally a nation, repel invaders, and prove to the world why her family alone holds the Mandate of Heaven.

[image error] Edge of War by Anthony Melchiorri

Humanity’s expansion into the stars has led to awe-inspiring discoveries—and terrifying new threats. An insidious alien race is waging an interstellar war, enslaving any civilization they encounter to carry out their galactic rampage. Now they have set their sights on mankind.

Tag Brewer is a medical scientist. Not a ship’s captain. But as humanity’s survival hangs in the balance, he must lead a ragtag crew of humans, a skeptical alien, and a synthetic lifeform into the depths of enemy territory. There he forms an uneasy alliance with a group of aliens—the Mechanics—fleeing from the destruction.

There is only one way to track down and stop their frightening new adversaries. Tag must follow the trail of devastation left behind in the fallen Mechanic empire. There he hopes to recruit other survivors to their cause. But what Tag and his crew find is far more dangerous than any of them thought possible.

[image error] Witness Enchantment by T.S. Paul:

The Magical Crimes Division of the FBI has been loaned out to WITSEC to help protect a very valuable witness. The only problem is they don’t like FBI Agents and refuse to allow them to take him. Agatha and her charge are plagued with Magickal Assassins, Evil Witches, and Fergus her Mini Unicorn. What is one Witch to do when even members of your own family are trying to kill you?

 

 

[image error] Locked Tight by Susan Kaye Quinn

In a world filled with mindreaders, being a mindjacker is a good way to end up dead.

And Zeph is no ordinary jacker.

He can break open the toughest minds—or lock the weakest ones—but that just makes him a weapon every jacker Clan wants to control. To keep his family of mindreaders safe, Zeph does what his Clan leader says and tries to shut out the screams—but when jackers are revealed to the world, he has no choice but to hug his kid sister goodbye and leave home.

Passing for a reader is something Zeph does well, but when readers start changing into jackers and his family disappears, Zeph must return to a city filled with jackers who hate him, trick a mindware CEO into helping him, avoid a girl who knows him too well, and spy on the most powerful jacker in the state.

All without dying or revealing his abilities—or being caught in the firestorm of hate between jackers and readers that’s threatening to pull the world apart.

[image error] Second Time Charm by Hollis Shiloh

I’ve wanted to work with a wolf partner for as long as I can remember. This is my third — and final — chance of being chosen by one.

You know what they say. Be careful what you wish for.

I had no idea wolves could be as broken as my new partner is. He has an intense phobia of dogs, his attitude reeks, he barely knows how to take care of himself, and doesn’t care about much of anything — except having lots of sex.

That’s the best thing about our partnership, the sex. But sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. I don’t know how to fix this. He’s difficult, annoying, handsome as hell…and I don’t want to give him up.

My dream come true is starting to feel like a nightmare. But the one he’s living turns out to be far worse.

A shifters and partners novel

[image error] The Third Twin by Darren Speegle

Some things should never be bred…

Barry Ocason, extreme sportsman and outdoor travel writer, receives a magazine in his mailbox and opens to an ad for an adventure in the Bavarian Alps. Initially dismissing the invitation, which seems to have been meant specifically for him, he soon finds himself involved in a larger plot and seeking answers to why an individual known only as the elephant man is terrorizing his family.

Barry and his daughter Kristen, who survived a twin sister taken from the family at a young age, travel from Juneau, Alaska to the sinister Spider Festival in Rio Tago, Brazil, before he ultimately answers the call to Bavaria, where the puzzle begins to come together.

Amid tribulation, death, madness, and institutionalization, a document emerges describing a scientist’s bloody bid to breed a theoretical “third twin,” which is believed to have the potential, through its connection with its siblings, to bridge the gulf between life and afterlife. The godlike creature that soon emerges turns out to be Barry’s own offspring, and she has dark plans for the world of her conception that neither her father nor any other mortal can stop.

[image error] Mercury’s Bane by Nick Webb:

They’re all gone. We remember them like yesterday: pieces of our stolen heritage. Things like NASA. Football. Parades and pies. Good things, comfortable things. We remember a time when we were alone in the universe, safe and oblivious.

But it’s all gone now.

We called them the Telestines, and in the face of their ruthless invasion we were powerless. By 2040, all the world’s governments and militaries had fallen, and the remnants of humanity exiled to the solar system. We looked down on our blue planet, so close to our birthplace, so close to our home. But the miles may as well have been lightyears.

Our anger smoldered in the darkness of space. On Mars. On Ganymede. In the dank crowded filth of the asteroids. We swore: we will take our planet back.

And today, it begins. Our fleet is ready. Our soldiers determined.

Earth will be ours again.

[image error] Coilhunter by Dean F. Wilson:

Welcome to the Wild North, a desolate wasteland where criminals go to hide—if they can outlast the drought and the dangers of the desert. Or the dangers of something else.

Meet Nox, the Coilhunter. A mechanic and toymaker by trade, a bounty hunter by circumstance. He isn’t in it for the money. He’s in it for justice, and there’s a lot of justice that needs to be paid.

Between each kill, he’s looking for someone who has kept out of his crosshairs for quite a while—the person who murdered his wife and children. The trail has long gone cold, but there are changes happening, the kind of changes that uncover footprints and spent bullet casings.

Plagued by nightmares, he’s made himself into a living one, the kind the criminals and conmen fear.

So, welcome, fair folk, to the Wild North. If the land doesn’t get you, the Coilhunter will.

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A Birthday and a Book Promotion

First of all, there is currently a big multi-author speculative fiction cross promotion going on. Over sixty authors are involved and all books are 99 cents. There is a list of all participating books here and if you scroll down, you may also find a title you recognise.

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What is more, April 18 is my birthday. I celebrated relatively low-key, since the long Easter weekend is only just over. And besides, I already went on a roadtrip with lunch at a nice restaurant yesterday, so going out for lunch or dinner again today felt like overkill. I’ll do that sometime next week, when things have calmed down a little.

I also didn’t feel like making an elaborate meal like sailor’s curry directly after a holiday weekend with several days of elaborate food. Besides, the curry will taste just as good next weekend or the one after.

I did watch a feel-good film though – Guardians of Galaxy, Vol. 1 – in preparation for Vol. 2, which will hit our theatres next week. I do find it interesting that we usually get the Marvel movies about a week or so before the US these days. I guess we are a test market for Marvel.

Though I did have visitors today – my parents, of course, as well as a neighbour. I also had a phonecall from a former student as well as a bunch of congratulations via e-mail and social media. In fact, I have noticed that I’m getting steadily fewer birthday cards, but more e-mail and social media congratulations. And given the cost of postage and also of cards, I find that I send fewer cards myself.

However, I did get some presents, so take a look:

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Wrapped birthday presents and a card.

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And here are the unwrapped presents. Lots of lovely books and coincidentally all of them by women.

My neighbour also brought me a bottle of wine, which is not in the photo.

If you’re wondering about the presence of Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire, when the Oktober Daye books were nominated for the best series Hugo, I checked my collection and noticed to my own surprise that though I had read some books in the series, I didn’t own the first book for some reason. So I put it on my wishlist and it promptly showed up for my birthday.

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Photos: Wangerland in East Friesia

Easter Monday is a public holiday here in Germany. And since the weather was a bit cold, but otherwise nice, we decided to go on an outing to the East Friesian North Sea coast to visit the municipality of Wangerland.

I also took my camera – well, only my smartphone camera, since I forgot to charge my proper camera – along, so here are some photos. Ships, fish, random wood paths and windmills. East Friesia borders on the Netherlands, so you can find quite a few windmills here.

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The windmill in Stumpens near the village of Horumersiel. Originally built in 1816, it houses a café nowadays.

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Another look at the windmill in Stumpens near Horumersiel.

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A close-up look at the top of the windmill in Stumpens. Note the gallery, which was included to facilitate maintenance work.

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This windmill is not in East Friesia, but in Osternburg near Oldenburg. Unlike the Stumpens windmill, the Osternburg mill was reconstructued according to historical blueprints and is actually less than twenty years old. It houses a restaurant and boutique hotel.

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A country road passes through a forest near Kirchhatten near Oldenburg.

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A wood path near Kirchhatten near Oldenburg.

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The “Möldens”, a decommissioned destroyer of the West German navy that now serves as an exhibit of the navy museum in Wilhelmshaven. Wihelmshaven has been one of the main ports of the German navy since the days of the second German empire. Even today, half of the buildings in the harbour either belong to the navy or used to belong to it.

Here is the homepage of the German Navy Museum in Wilhelmshaven and here is the Wikipedia entry for the destroyer Mölders.

We also had lunch at favourite restaurant of ours, “Die Brücke” (The Bridge) in the village of Hooksiel, a seafood restaurant which also smokes its own fish.

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The restaurant “Die Brücke” (The Bridge) in the village of Hooksiel.

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Here’s my lunch: A so-called sluicegate keeper’s platter, consisting of filet of rosefish and filet of zander with lobster sauce and grey shrimp.

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Lunch (not mine): Matjes (Dutch salted herring) housewife style, which means served with a sour cream sauce with apples, onions and dill.

Here is the recipe for Matjes, housewife style, BTW.

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Finally, this is something I made for dinner yesterday: Eggs Kejriwal

I found the recipe for Eggs Kejriwal, an egg and cheese sandwich originally served at a country club in Mumbai, here. It sounded tasty, so I wanted to try it out and Easter was the perfect excuse. It doesn’t look as pretty as in the recipe, but it was very tasty.

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Of False Memories and Explosions

Yesterday, I came across this article by Kate Lunau on Motherboard, in which psychologist Julia Shaw explains false memories and how they form. It’s a fascinating article, which also struck a chord with me, because I have a very vivid memory of a traumatic event stuck in my head that happens to be false.

In 1979, a fire broke out at the Rolandmühle, a flour mill here in Bremen, which caused a devastating flour dust explosion that killed 14 people, injured a further 17 and caused a huge amount of damage. Here is an article about the explosion.

I was not quite six years old at the time of the disaster and I have an extremely vivid memory of watching the explosion happen: In my memory, I’m standing on the far side of the Nordstraße. The sun is shining, the wind is tugging at my dress and playing with my still short hair that has only begun to grow out, the daffodils on the dike are blooming and I’m looking over at the mill, when it suddenly explodes. As memories go, this one is absolutely crystal clear, as if it happened only yesterday. My mind can replay it at will. Worse, I sometimes get flashbacks, whenever I happen to be near the Rolandmühle. Once, when I had to drive directly past the flour silos, I got not just a flashback, but a full blown panic attack to and had to stop the car, which is not exactly ideal, because it’s an area where street prostitutes hang out and stopping your car there, even though you’re not a customer will only piss them off.

This memory, which is so absolutely clear and vivid, is also completely false. The explosion really did happen and I knew the Rolandmühle, because I often drove past it with my parents on our way to visit friends of theirs. However, I was nowhere near the mill, when it exploded. Instead, I was about twenty kilometres away, most likely in bed.

Replaying the memory – and remember that I can replay it at will – it’s notable that there are some things about it that are odd. For starters, the memory has no sound – the explosion happens in absolute silence, even though the real explosion was so loud it could heard as far as twenty-five kilometres away. I also don’t turn away or duck or scream, I just stand there calmly and watch it happen like in a movie, which isn’t particularly likely, especially not considering I was only six years old at the time. I can also read the signs on the mill and the other factory buildings in the area, even though I wasn’t in school yet and therefore couldn’t read. Finally, in the memory I’m all alone on a street, where I had no reason to be, since I only knew the area from driving past it.

Nonetheless, I assumed for many years that the memory was real and that we must have driven past the mill, when it exploded. Only that my parents had no memory at all of driving past the exploding Rolandmühle and that’s not something one is likely to forget. So eventually I assumed that I had simply seen a footage of the explosion on TV and mistook it for one of my memories.

However, there is no footage of the explosion, only of the aftermath. So how could I come to have a clear memory of watching footage that doesn’t exist.

Upon closer examination, a lot of the details of my memory are off: The explosion happened at half past nine at night, yet in my memory it is daylight. And in my memory, I clearly remember wearing a dress and seeing the daffodils on the dike, even though the explosion happened on a cold night in February. Plus, photos taken after the explosion show that the part of the mill where I remember seeing it happen is about the only part that remained undamaged.

So how can I so clearly remember an event I neither witnessed nor that ever happened that way? The Motherboard article explains that if you imagine something happening over and over again, it will eventually turn into a false memory. And this is precisely what happened here.

Now the explosion at the Rolandmühle was front page news in Bremen in February of 1979, so even at the age of not quite six, I would have heard about it on the radio and TV news. The event also clearly terrified me, because I knew the mill from driving past it with my parents every weekend and because that sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in places you knew. Buildings exploded in war zones far away, but not where I lived. And flour was not supposed to explode at all (in fact, dust explosions happen on occasion, but most people are completely unaware that flour can cause massive explosions).

So I must have become obsessed with the explosion and imagined it happening over and over again, until it turned into a memory. This also explains the discrepancies. I imagined the scene in daylight, because we’d only driven past the mill by day. I imagined the explosion seen from Nordstraße, because that was the street we always drove along (There are some photos of what the area looks like today here). And of course, I imagined the explosion in the front part of the mill that was actually visible from the street rather than where it really happened. The daffodils really do grow on the dike in front of the mill – you can see a photo here – so I incorporated them in my memory. My hair was really still short in February 1979 and I really had a dress like the one I remember wearing – though I have no idea why I incorporated this particular dress, since it wasn’t a favourite. So I recreated a scenario out of all of this bits of reality, the street, the mill, the daffodils, the dress, the short hair, and somehow managed to implant a false memory in my brain. Coincidentally, this memory feels as real, if not more so, as other memories from the same time, even though I know that it’s false.

When I first heard of false memories, e.g. of people recalling crimes that never happened (and of course, talk of false memories first surfaced in the context of allegedly false sexual abuse allegations supposedly planted by overzealous investigators), I viewed it as just another excuse to dismiss crimes and not believe the victims. Once I realised that I have a vivid false memory myself I became more open to the idea that false memories can and do exist, though that does not mean that sexual abuse and other allegations should be dismissed, but that they should be investigated thoroughly.

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Photos: Heiligenrode and Spring Flowers

Due to several warm and sunny days in March, spring is currently in full bloom here in North Germany, so it’s time for some spring flower pictures.

What is more, the long Easter weekend also caused massive traffic jams on all the highways in the area. Therefore, on Thursday afternoon, while I was on the way back from Oldenburg, I found myself forced to leave the highway and make my way home via smaller country roads. I chanced to come through the village of Heiligenrode and stopped for a cup of ice cream.

The village of Heiligenrode is more than 800 years old and was once home to a benedictine abbey, which was founded in 1182. The nuns are long gone, but the old abbey church is still there as is the so-called abbey mill, a restored water mill. I’ve been in Heiligenrode dozens of times, since I live only five kilometres away. But while I was enjoying my ice cream, I suddenly realised that I had never actually taken any photos of the village and promptly proceeded to remedy that.

So here are some photos of the Heiligenrode abbey mill, the Klosterbach a.k.a. the Varreler Bäke and the so-called Mühlteich (mill pond):

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Traditional timbered farmhouse in Heiligenrode. Note the inscription above the door.

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The Heiligenrode water mill. This building houses the actual mill – the miller used to live next door – and was built in 1843. However, there has been a water mill at this spot since the 16th century.

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The water wheel of the Heiligenrode mill. The building across the road is the old bakery house.

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Here is a closer look at the water wheel of the Heiligenrode abbey mill. It’s still functional, too.

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A look down the Klosterbach, which is known as Varreler Bäke outside Heiligenrode, with the water wheel of the mill in the foreground.

The Klosterbach a.k.a. Varreler Bäke is mentioned in the song “Delmenhorst” by the German band Element of Crime, by the way, as the “brook behind Huchting, which goes into the Ochtum”, since the road B75 crosses it on the way from Bremen to Delmenhorst. It’s a delightful song in general and even better, when driving down B75 towards Delmenhorst (Element of Crime singer Sven Regener is originally from Bremen). Unfortunately, there is only a low quality live version on YouTube.

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A look across the so-called Mühlteich a.k.a mill pond, which branches out from the Klosterbach. The people in the middle of the pond are not particularly hardy bathers, but an art installation.

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A closer look at the art installation “Der Mensch lebt nicht vom Brot allein” (Man does not live only of bread) by sculptor Petra Förster.

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This was supposed to be an even closer look at the art installation in the Mühlteich. Unfortunately, the camera focussed on the leaves instead, but it’s still a great shot.

Here is a close-up photo (not mine) of the art installation and here is the website of artist Petra Förster. Coincidentally, I was present when one of the sculptures was cast as past of a local film group making a documentary about the artist.

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Here are some tulips in full bloom in my grden.

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A closer look at the tulips in my garden.

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More tulips in my garden, this time shot against a brick wall.

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I have no idea what these little purple flowers in my neighbour’s garden are called, but they sure are pretty.

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Finally, here is today’s lunch, Indian egg curry.

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