Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 90

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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And even more reactions to the 2017 Hugo Finalists

In general, the 2017 Hugo Awards shortlist is less contentious than those of previous years, but were still seeing reactions trickling in. I offered my own take on the 2017 shortlist and also did a round-up of reactions from around the web here and then another round-up a few days later.

However, since then a few more Hugo reaction and discussion posts have appeared, so here is round-up number 3. As always, thanks to Mike Glyer of File 770 for pointing out some of the links I missed. I already included some of these as ETAs to the previous post, but I’m including them again here.

At Library Journal, Wilda Williams, Megan McArdle and Kristi Chadwick cheer about the quality and diversity of the 2017 Hugo finalists and also offer brief reviews of several of the nominated novels and novellas.

At his blog, Mark Kaedrin shares his thoughts about the 2017 Hugo finalists and is generally pleased.

Camestros Felapton continues his reviews of the 2017 Hugo finalists and takes a look at “San Junipero”, an episode of the anthology series Black Mirror, as well as at Splendor & Misery, the Hugo-nominated album by Clipping, and is quite impressed. Tor.com also has a bit more about the album, which at least to me was the biggest unknown among the non-puppy nominees. I have now listened to some of the tracks and watched some of the videos and agree that Splendor & Misery is clearly SF and a worthy nominee in the best dramatic presentation category. The music itself is not to my taste, I fear, but the album definitely deserves to be on the ballot.

However, not everybody is happy about the 2017 Hugo shortlist. For example, Jonathan McCalmont is still grumbly, particularly about the best series Hugo, as these tweets show:

I don't really like space opera and I really don't like MilSF.

— Jonathan McCalmont (@ApeInWinter) April 7, 2017

I give books 100 pages and I think that's already pretty fucking generous.

— Jonathan McCalmont (@ApeInWinter) April 7, 2017

Suspect truth is that people read for social reasons. Peer-group uptake + conformity keeps them coming back and hoping it'll click.

— Jonathan McCalmont (@ApeInWinter) April 7, 2017

I wonder if McCalmont even has a membership for WorldCon 75, which would enable him to vote in the Hugos. And if the idea of a best series Hugo or the finalists in that category annoy him so much, maybe he should just leave the respective field blank or no award the whole category. Also, we get by now that Jonathan McCalmont doesn’t care for Lois McMaster Bujold’s work, considering he has been going on about how much he dislikes her work (apparently without ever having read any of it) at least since 2008 (some bonus “WorldCon is insular and small, Comic Con/Dragon Con are future” pronouncements in the comments – puppies and anti-nostalgics really do sound eerily similar at times).

Shortly thereafter, McCalmont’s feud with Mike Glyer and File 770 escalated into a long distance flame war with Scott Lynch and Ann Leckie among others.

Meanwhile, over in puppy land, it’s still conspicuously quiet. One could view this post by Dave Freer proclaiming the imminent death of traditional publishing and the total irrelevance of the Hugos, because they don’t bow to the tastes of true American Trump voter for Nutty Nuggets or something, as a comment on the 2017 Hugo shortlist, but in typical Mad Genius Club fashion he is rather oblique about what precisely he is referring to.

And at Seagull Rising*, a Castalia House blogger named Jon Mollison complains that much of the coverage of the Hugo Awards focusses on the diversity of the nominees and the fact that so many women, people of colour and LGBT people were nominated, but not on the nominated novels and stories themselves. The reason for this, Mollison declares, is that the dreaded SJWs don’t read.

For starters, accusing other people of not reading is a bit rich coming from someone who blogs at a site which celebrates the rediscovery of such obscure and long lost authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack Williamson. Though I grant him that the Castalia House blog really does review a lot of books these days, when they are not busily rewriting the history of speculative fiction (apparently, the current version is that it all went downhill after 1937). Okay, so the puppy SFF they review is not my thing at all (one review I saw praised an indie SF novel for its “feminine heroine”, who is properly subservient to the manly hero – big eye roll here), but reviewing books and recommending them to those that might like them is a lot more productive than messing with the Hugos.

Nonetheless, Mollison is wrong, for I’ve seen plenty of discussion of the 2017 Hugo finalists and already linked to a couple of posts discussing some of the finalists in greater depth in my last round-up. And besides, an overview of the 2017 Hugo finalists is not exactly the place for an in-depth discussion of the nominated works. Never mind that many of the finalists were already reviewed and discussed in depth, back when they first came out, and will likely be discussed again, once everybody who missed the nominated works the first time around has had the chance to read them, especially since the Hugo voters packet isn’t even out yet.

Meanwhile, at Raynfall, Claire Ryan is surprised to find herself in agreement with the puppies (whom she dislikes a lot) that the Hugos are irrelevant, since they are bound to traditional publishing and have rarely recognised indie books so far.

Now she does have a point that it is more difficult for an indie author to get awards recognition, though self-published works have been nominated for the Nebula Award, the BSFA Award, the Kitschies and even the Hugos and not just by the puppies either. For example, the Penric novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, the first of which was nominated last year, while the sequel was nominated this year, are self-published. A couple of years ago, Seanan McGuire was also nominated for a self-published novelette. So yes, it is absolutely possible for an indie author to be nominated for major genre awards, though it helps to have name recognition from prior traditionally published works.

Besides, Claire Ryan falls into the puppy trap of equating sales figures with awards worthiness, even though the two are not the same at all. There are plenty of bestsellers which will never win any awards and there are just as many award-winning books which don’t sell all that well. Besides, as I’ve said before, due to a combination of Amazon’s algorithms, the fact that their customer base is predominantly concentrated in rural parts of the the US and the write-to-market ethos currently popular among indie authors, Amazon’s science fiction bestseller lists currently look like Baen’s slushpile, a lot of Starship Troopers and Lost Fleet knock-offs with the same exploding spaceship in space covers, whereas many of the fantasy lists are dominated by shifter paranormal romance featuring bare-chested men on the cover. These books clearly sell very, very well, but does that automatically make Taken by the Alien Warlord or Destroy the Last Fleet of Terra (apologies, if those are real titles) Hugo-worthy?

Are there indie SFF books that are award worthy? There absolutely are. But they’re probably not found on the bestseller lists dominated by exploding spaceships in space or bare-chested werebear shifters. What is more, a lot of the breakout indie books like Andy Weir’s The Martian, Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet or Hugh Howey’s Wool were slow burn successes that spread via word of mouth, so by the time they reached critical mass among fandom, the eligibility period had already expired. The Campbell Award specifically has different rules, hence Andy Weir was still eligible for the Campbell Award last year, even though he began serializing The Martian on his blog back in 2012.

*Does anybody else find the idea of a rabid puppy taking inspiration from Jonathan Livingston Seagull of all things as funny as I do?

Comments are still off and passive aggressive e-mails will be deleted unread. Grumble elsewhere.

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Yet More Reactions to the 2017 Hugo Finalists

Thanks to Mike Glyer of File 770, the hits on my Hugo reaction post and the space opera post of the day before have gone through the roof. My first round-up of Hugo reactions from around the web got a lot of attention as well.

Meanwhile, more reactions are trickling in, so here are the latest links:

First of all, at File 770, JJ has compiled links to all of the 2017 Hugo nominees or excerpts thereof that are available for free online.

Also at File 770, Kyra scopes out the Hugo nomination stats and distribution and comes to the conclusion that the clearest favourites were to be found in the dramatic presentation and semiprozine categories and the least clearest in the short story and fan categories.

At her blog, Cheryl Morgan offers a brief reaction post and is overall pleased with the quality of the nominees.

At newstalk, James Dempsey lists the 2017 Hugo nominees and also offers a summary of the puppy affair, which he blames on men’s rights activists. Well, Vox Day is affiliated with the men’s rights movement, but he isn’t even mentioned in the article. And while Larry Correia, who is mentioned by name, may be many things, he never struck me as an MRA type. It’s not the only inaccuracy in the article, e.g. Larry Correia lives in Utah, not in California.

At Metafilter, there is an interesting discussion about the 2017 Hugo finalists. I came across it, because I got hits from there.

As for nominee reactions, Natalie Luhrs, highly deserving finalist in the best fan writer category, celebrates her Hugo nomination with this post, complete with flailing Kermit gif.

The CBC radio program All in a Day has a brief segment about the Hugo Awards, featuring Hugo nominees Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Comic artist Alex Garner is honoured to be nominated, but not quite sure why they ended up in the best fan artist category, since Alex Garner is a professional artist:

@ScottW_inks Yeah, it's a bit odd. I told them I've been pro since '93. They said this is based off outside fan work I did. So okay! I'll accept the nom.

— Alex Garner (@AlexGarnerArt) April 6, 2017

For more nominee reactions, here is Daveed Diggs of Clipping, the rap group nominated in the best dramatic presentation category for their album Splendor & Misery, on Twitter:

Thank you so much to all the #Worldcon members who voted to make @clppng a finalist for the #2017HugoAwards! We are beyond honored. https://t.co/WGOaAczIfb

— Daveed Diggs (@DaveedDiggs) April 4, 2017

Coincidentally, I’m pleased to note that Daveed Diggs makes the only all-male category on the 2017 Hugo ballot a little less white.

For more about Clipping, who at least to me are the serious 2017 Hugo nominee I know the least about, Jason Heller interviews them at The Pitch and also shares some videos for those who want a sample of their work.

However, the most mysterious of the 2017 Hugo finalists is undoubtedly Stix Hiscock, author of Alien Stripper Bones From Behind By The T-Rex, which gained a Hugo nomination in the best novelette category due to tickling Vox Day’s dino-erotica kink. The identity of Stix Hiscock was a complete enigma, but now Beth Elderkin of io9 has managed to track down the mysterious author and reveals that Stix Hiscock is a woman writing erotica under multiple pen names. Stix Hiscock apparently had no idea neither of the existence of Chuck Tingle nor of Vox Day and the rabid puppies. That makes the best novelette category a six women race, by the way. If you’re curious about the actual story, Lela E. Buis has reviewed it here.

Meanwhile, everybody’s favourite Hugo-nominated author of satirical erotica Chuck Tingle strikes again by snapping up the domain name of his evil twin Stix Hiscock and using it for good. Honestly, it’s stunts like this that gained Tingle a best fanwriter nomination and may even see him win, though he has very tough and deserving competition in Natalie Luhrs, Foz Meadows, Abigail Nussbaum and Mike Glyer. Personally, I suspect that best fan writer will be among the hardest categories for me to decide, since five nominees are brilliant in their own unique way and even the puppy nominee isn’t completely awful. Though since it turned out that Stix Hiscock is not in fact Chuck Tingle’s evil twin, but another unwitting puppy hostage, I’m hoping for a Chuck Tingle and Stix Hiscock team-up against the devilman. Because love is real.

On the other hand, very little has been heard from the puppy camp. Yes, puppy hangers-on like Declan Finn and Jon Del Arroz weighed in one the Hugos (I linked to their comments in my last post) and here is another post I missed from a Castalia House blogger called Jon Mollison declaring the Hugos irrelevant. But so far the leading sad and rabid puppies are conspicuously silent, even those that managed to snag a nomination. Perhaps, they’ve all decamped to the Dragon Awards by now. We can but hope.

Talking of th Dragon Awards, you don’t have to be a puppy to nominate and vote – anybody can sign up and nominate. The link is here.

On the other hand, puppy tears have elicited a bit of Schadenfreude among non-puppies, as these tweets from Cheryl Morgan and Charles Stross show:

@CherylMorgan @CoraBuhlert So puppies are now experiencing everyone else's experience of the Hugos for the past few years? Heart. Bleeds.

— Charlie Stross (@cstross) April 6, 2017

And at Amazing Stories, Steve Davidson counters some of the usual puppy criticism that the Hugos and WorldCon are dead, long live DragonCon and the Dragon Awards by telling people to educate themselves about the history of WorldCon and the Hugos.

What is more, after two years of talking mainly about puppies, we’re also finally back where we were in 2013/2014, debating and grumbling about the relative merits of the nominees:

At the Barnes & Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy blog, Ross Johnson focusses on the nominees in the new best series category and declares it one of the hardest to vote upon. I agree with Ross Johnson that the best series category has come up with an excellent set of finalists, even if not every series is to my personal taste. Though interestingly enough, best series is one of the fairly few categories, where I already have a preliminary ranking, though that may change, as I revisit series I haven’t read in a long time. I’m also pretty certain which series will take my number 1 spot, namely the Vorkosigan Saga.

On the other hand, best fan writer wil be one of the hardest categories for me to vote in, since we have five very different and highly deserving nominees and even the puppy pick isn’t a complete disaster. So Camestros Felapton offers his evaluation of the 2017 best fan writer finalists here.

But as usual, most debates so far focus on the best novel category.

Cametros Felapton is ambivalent about Death’s End by Liu Cixin, but find it’s closer to The Three Body Problem, the Hugo-winning first volume in the series, than the somewhat lacklustre second volume The Dead Forest. Now I have to admit that though I was happy when The Three Body Problem won the best novel Hugo in 2015 and finally put the “world” into WorldCon, the actual book did not do much for me and wasn’t my first or even my second choice on the ballot. I haven’t read Death’s End yet (nor The Dead Forest for that matter), but I’m pretty sure it won’t be my top pick in this category, especially since some of the other nominees were books I enjoyed a whole lot and even nominated.

On the other hand, I’ve heard from quite a few people that they bounced off Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer due to the narrative voice. For example, here is Chris Gerrib deciding that Too Like the Lightning is just not the book for him.

I find these reactions to Too Like the Lightning interesting, because the 18th century style narrative voice was a large part of what drew me to the novel in the first place, even though I dislike theological and philosophical discussions in my SF and Too Like the Lightning promised to have a lot of that. But then I read many of the actual 18th century novels whose style and voice Ada Palmer is imitating at university and therefore had exposure to that style that others might not have had. Too Like the Lightning is not without flaws (and note that I haven’t read the sequel, Seven Surrenders, yet, because it’s still only available in hardcover and as a very pricey e-book), but it’s definitely an ambitious work in an era that has seen a lot of ambitious SFF works. Coincidentally, Too Like the Lightning also proves, along with The Fifth Season, the Imperial Radch series and several of the short fiction nominees of recent years that this is a time for strong and unique narrative voices in SFF.

Another work that has caused some divisive reactions is Becky Chambers’ second novel A Closed and Common Orbit. Now this is not a book I would have considered controversial at all – in fact, it’s probably one of the most accessible novels on the shortlist, a lot more accessible than Ninefox Gambit or Too Like the Lightning or The Obelisk Gate (I haven’t read All the Birds in the Sky yet, though my copy arrived today).

But for some reason, Becky Chambers’ novels are really controversial, particularly among the anti-nostalgic fraction of UK fans and critics. I’m not entirely sure why, but there was a lot of grumbling from the usual quarters when Becky Chambers’ debut, The Long Way to Small, Angry Planet, was nominated for Golden Tentacle in the 2014 Kitschies and subsequently shortlisted for both the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Here is Jonathan McCalmont eviscerating The Long Way to Small, Angry Planet in his Interzone column and here is Megan doing the same to Becky Chambers’ novel and the rest of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist at her blog From Couch to Moon.

Both reviews are quite typical of what I called the “anti-nostalgic fraction” in my “three fractions of speculative fiction” theory in that a well regarded novel that was praised for its diversity and progressiveness is criticised by anti-nostalgics for being not progressive enough, e.g. there are complaints that the character of Rosemary, you know the brown-skinned human woman who is in a lesbian interspecies relationship with a polyamorous reptilian alien, has the shockingly conventional job of administrative assistant or that The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet fails to criticise capitalism and that the captain and crew of the Wayfarer want to – horror of horrors – make money. In many ways, these reviews sound eerily like the 1970s pop culture criticism that I came across in mouldy paperbacks during my time at the university, where any pop cultural phenomenon was inevitably attacked for not raising the consciousness of the working class or not criticising capitalism or similar, which usually left me yelling in frustration, “It’s G-Man Jerry Cotton, for fuck’s sake. It’s not supposed to usher in the communist revolution.” I though that sort of thing had died out decades ago – at any rate it was obvious that the mouldy paperbacks containing those pronouncements hadn’t been checked out of the university library in years – but apparently it’s still alive and well among the Shadow Clarke Jury.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet never made it to the Hugo shortlist (and it does have its share of flaws) and wouldn’t have been eligible last year anyway due to being originally self-published in 2014, though Becky Chambers might well have gotten a Campbell nomination last year, if not for puppy interference. However, this year, Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit, a sort of sequel set in the same universe as Chambers’ debut novel, made the Hugo shortlist in the best novel category. And predictably, some people are not happy.

At the Metafilter discussion I linked above, Charles Stross (yes, I checked, it is the author) has this to say about Becky Chambers’ Hugo nominated novel A Closed and Common Orbit:

I’m … I don’t like to trash-talk other authors, but I’m not happy to see that particular Becky Chambers novel on the best novel shortlist. She’s a good writer: I’m sure she can (and will) do a lot better. (Confession: I have a mad hate on for “teching the tech”, Star Trek style, especially in space opera. Also for aliens who are humans in funky latex face-paint, starships bumping into asteroid fields, and about two other cliches per page of that novel. YMMV and it’s just a matter of taste, of course, but I’ll be happier if the win goes to any other novel on the shortlist, and I bounced hard off two of them.)

Considering that two of Charles Stross’ early contributions to the New British Space Opera, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, were at least partly responsible for my frustration with the entire space opera subgenre in the early 2000s, as chronicled here, I’m not surprised that he doesn’t like Becky Chambers’ books and that he has no idea why anybody else would like them either. After all, IMO the biggest strength of Becky Chambers’ novels are the characters. And characterisation has never been Charles Stross forte, to put it mildly.

Interestingly enough, I have never seen anybody from the puppy camp comment on either The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet or A Closed and Common Orbit, probably because those books are not on their radar at all. But considering that both books feature a diverse cast, including LGBT and non-binary characters, are explicitly nonviolent and are set in a future where all humans are mixed race and the lone white guy is something of a freak, I’m pretty certain that the vast majority of puppies would not like them.

Which once again shows that the traditionalist (which includes the puppies) and anti-nostalgic fraction will probably never agree on what makes a good SFF book, but are often eerily united with regard to books they dislike.

Comments are off. Puppies (and disgruntled anti-nostalgics) whine elsewhere.

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Reactions to the 2017 Hugo Finalists

Currently, the SFF world is all abuzz talking about the Hugos, but of course there are other awards announcing their shortlists at this time of the year as well. One of them is the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and this year’s shortlist includes a science fiction novel, The Power by Naomi Alderman. This isn’t the first time the Bailey’s Prize has recognised speculative fiction – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers was one of last year’s nominees.

But now, let’s get back to the Hugos: My own take on the 2017 Hugo Awards shortlist is here (and hits are currently going through the roof thanks to Mike Glyer of File 770 linking to it), so let’s take a look at other reactions from around the web:

At Forbes, Kevin Murname offers a list of the 2017 Hugo finalists as well as a brief summary of the whole puppy mess.

At the Barnes & Noble SFF blog, Joel Cunningham is very pleased by the scope and diversity of the 2017 Hugo nominees and declares that the future of science fiction is diverse. He also makes a crack about the Marvel Comics diversity uproar, but then it is low hanging fruit.

Case in point, at Fusion.net, Charles Pulliam-Moore focusses on the Hugo finalists in the graphic story category and points out that the nominations for Ms. Marvel and Black Panther (as well as for the Image comics Monstress and Saga) belie the claim by Marvel’s vice president of sales David Gabriel that diverse comics don’t sell.

At Bleeding Cool, Jude Terror focusses mainly on the comic related Hugo finalists, but then Bleeding Cool is a comics site. Of course, he also cannot resist making a crack about three of Marvel’s supposdly so unpopular diverse series getting Hugo nods.

David Gerrold is happy to see the Hugos return to their pre-2015 form, as the sad puppies fade into obscurity, and hopes to see the rabids fade away soon as well. He also points out that the attacks on the Hugos by the sad and rabid puppies caused the WorldCon community (and SFF fandom in general) to come together to repeal them.

At Dreaming About Other Worlds, Aaron Pound is happy to finally have a good Hugo shortlist full of fantastic nominees again. He also points out that the sad puppies faded away and that while the rabid puppies managed to get a few of their choices onto the shortlist, their impact has been much diluted by the 5/6 and EPH voting systems as well as by the rabids’ own incompetence in determining what is eligible.

At Bookriot, Alex Acks is also generally pleased by a very good Hugo shortlist before proceeding to measure the impact of the rabid puppies on the 2017 Hugo ballot. He comes to the conclusion that there is still puppy poo on the ballot, but it’s manageable. And since the 5/6 system has given us an extra nominee per category, we are basically getting a full category of five finalists plus an occasional additional serious finalists.

Camestros Felapton offers his comments on the 2017 Hugo ballot and is overall very pleased with the outcome. So far, nothing has been heard from Timothy, the talking cat.

In a follow-up post, Camestros Felapton also offers a guide how to evaluate the nominees in the best series category, since the reading load for a long and unfamiliar series can be heavy.

Ana Grilo and Thea James of The Book Smugglers are thrilled to be nominated for the Hugo in the best semiprozine category in a year with such a great shortlist.

Ana Grilo is also nominated in the fancast category along with Renay Williams for the Fangirl Happy Hour, which is one of my favourite SFF podcasts. They have now uploaded a special 2017 Hugo nomination edition of the Fangirl Happy Hour. Renay and Ana are also happy that the Hugos are finally back to normal and that people are back to agonising about how to rank the many good choices on the ballot rather then looking for something, anything at least halfway decent to vote for. They also have some strong words about the rabid puppies.

At The Mary Sue, Kaila Hale-Stern is really happy about the 2017 Hugo ballot and particularly about the organic best fan writer nomination for Dr. Chuck Tingle.

Meanwhile, the estimable Dr. Chuck Tingle has responded to his second hugo nomination in his own unique way by writing and publishing Pounded In The Butt By My Second Hugo Nomination. Because love is real.

Abigail Nussbaum is happy about her well deserved Hugo nomination in the best fan writer category, but frustrated about the continued puppy poo presence on the shortlist. She also finds the finalists in several categories a bit predictable and middle of the road and would like to return to those pre-2014 of arguing about the Hugo shortlist and the various nominees and not about puppies.

Indeed, we are seeing some predictable grumblings about the quality of the shortlisted works from the anti-nostalgic part of the SFF spectrum (for my theory of the three fractions of speculative fiction, see this post).

On Twitter, Ian Sales had this to say about the 2017 Hugo finalists in the short fiction categories:

this weekend I have to read the Hugo short fiction categories for a panel at Eastercon. May not make it out the other side…

— Ian Sales (@ian_sales) 5. April 2017

Also on Twitter, Jonathan McCalmont shares his thoughts about the 2017 Hugo finalists:

Also amused that Penny is up for a Campbell. We’ve gone from nominating fascists to nominating people who write apologia for fascists.

— Jonathan McCalmont (@ApeInWinter) 4. April 2017

McCalmont’s issues with Campbell nominee Laurie Penny stem from the fact that Laurie Penny knows internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos from way back and uses those connections and the fact that Milo considers her a friend to get an inside look at the so-called alt-right movement and uses this access to write revealing articles about them. Here is an older article from The Guardian where she follows Milo and friends around the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, during last year’s presidential campaign, and here is a more recent article from Pacific Standard Magazine written during Milo’s fall from grace.

Now I’ve been quite critical myself of the flood of “We must understand how the white rustbelt Trump voter thinks, so I visited Dogshit, Ohio*, to interview a few of them” thinkpieces or the German variant, “We must understand how the white East German AfD voter thinks, so I visited Klein Ostkotzski in Saxony** and interviewed a few them”, because a lot of those articles and thinkpieces can be reduced to “Wah, won’t someone think of the widdle white man” whining. However, Laurie Penny’s articles are not like that. For starters, the Milo and Trump supporters she looks at are not unemployed steelworkers in the rustbelt, but young white middle class men from a generally privileged background. And she reveals these characters for what they are, pathetic and whiny little boys. And unlike the many “Wah, won’t someone think of the poor widdle white man” articles, I don’t see those artices as an apologia, but rather as a scathing look at what those people are truly like. Because that’s what journalists do, go to dark places, so we don’t have to.

Besides, Laurie Penny is nominated for a Campbell Award not for her journalistic work, but for her fiction, i.e. the short story “You Orisons May Be Recorded” and the novella Everything Belongs to the Future. Besides, she is one of six nominees in a very strong category, so those who disagree with Laurie Penny’s nomination still have five other nominees (well, four organic nominees and one puppy) to vote for.

Others have issues with works that did not make the Hugo shortlist. Here is someone named Will Ellwood complaining that Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe trilogy did not make the shortlist. Which I’m actually grateful for, because I do not like those novels. And besides, a lot of my favourites did not make the shortlist either.

@ApeInWinter A society which does recognise the Europe books is not mine.

— Will Ellwood (@fragmad) 4. April 2017

I’ve also seen grumblings about the fact that the Fireside Fiction report on the state of black science fiction is missing from the best related work shortlist and indeed it would have been a most worthy nominee. Though I suspect that when the extended nomination lists come out in August, we’ll see that it narrowly missed the nomination threshold. And given the trashfire that the best related work category was these past two years, I guess we’re all just glad to have something decent to vote for.

But in general, the British contingent of the anti-nostalgic fraction seems to have decamped to the Clarke Award Shadow Jury project, which not just generates some interesting reviews, but is also a lot more productive than what the majority of puppies are doing.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s hear what the puppies, both sad and rabid, have to say (all links go to archive.is):

Vox Day lists all the rabid picks he managed to get onto the ballot, predictably chuckles a bit over Alien Stripper Boned from Behind by the T-Rex and grumbles about the best novel (unsurprisingly, he still hates N.K. Jemisin, though he urges his fans to vote for The Obelisk Gate, because… well, I guess it makes sense to him, if not to anybody else) and best series finalists (he hates everything except for the Vorkosigan saga). In short, nothing new or even overly shocking from the Supreme Lord of Darkness or however he refers to himself these days. He also seems to be a lot more interested in the latest US political scandal.

Declan Finn, an indie writer who attached himself to the puppies, is not at all happy about the 2017 Hugo ballot and declares that it has been swamped by crap. Besides, there are way too many women on the ballot for his tastes and that’s just not possible without interference by the shadowy SJW cabal that meets every Wednesday in the basement of the Flatiron building, cause women can’t possibly be any good, can they? Plus, the one woman he really wanted to see there, Toni Weisskopf of Baen, is missing from the ballot (good point, actually. I suspect her status as a puppy cause celebre cost her organic nominations). He also claims that he hasn’t heard of most of the nominees in the series and novel categories, though he knows they are inferior to his personal favourites, because those sell so much better. Coincidentally, I had to google what Black Tide Rising even was (a series by John Ringo, it turns out). Though I’m stunned that Finn missed The Expanse (written by two white men at that), even though everybody is talking about the TV series based on the books these days. Oh yes, and the Dragon Awards are much better, so would you please vote for him? In short, Finn manages to fill the whole puppy bingo card in one post (with bonus misgendering and transphobia in the comments), which takes some doing.

ETA: Declan Finn also chose to take issue with some commenters at File 700 picking apart his post, so he made a follow-up point declaring that he totally doesn’t care about the Hugos, and besides, Honor Harrington totally was eligible for best series (yes, it was. Hugo voters still chose not to nominate it. They also chose not to nominate four of my five best series nominees. It happens). Finn also can’t grasp that File 770 commenters make fun of Terry Goodkind. Now I’ve never read Goodkind, since extruded fantasy product is not my thing, but I’ve also never heard of anybody over the age of fourteen who genuinely liked his books. Finally, Finn still feels the need to whiteknight for Toni Weisskopf and is apparently really upset that last year’s all-female Ghostbusters film got a Hugo nod. Though I’m surprised he believes it will win, considering it’s up against the massively popular and critically acclaimed Arrival and Hidden Figures (but then, he’d probably hate Hidden Figures, too) as well as against the nostalgia appeal of Stranger Things.

Jon Del Arroz, a newish puppy recruit (he joined their ranks after complaining that a con was discriminating against him for voting for Donald Trump), insists on pointing out that the number of Hugo nominations in 2017 (coincidentally the second highest number of nominations ever after 2016) means that WorldCon is dying, because it discriminates against “real fans” (TM) who are conservative and Christian. The Superversive SF blog makes the same point, nominations are down from an all-time high in 2016, so that means the Hugos and WorldCon are dying. Aw, puppy math! I guess it makes sense in some parallel universe.

Meanwhile, the editor of Cirsova magazines is just happy to be nominated in the best semiprozine category and manages to express his joy without any swipes at Tor, social justice warriors and other nominees. He also offers some links to interviews about the magazine from around the web for those who are interested in learning more.

At Every Day Should be Tuesday, a Castalia House blogger named H.P. declares that the 2017 Hugo Award shortlist does not interest him enough to purchase a supporting membership for WorldCon 75, so he can vote. However, he does like some of the finalists and is looking forward to reading/watching some of the others and not just the rabid puppy picks, too. So it is possible for puppy sympathisers to write about the Hugos without getting rude about it.

Larry Correia, the man who started it all when he was angry about losing the Campbell Award to Lev Grossman back in 2011, has emerged from his mountain top retreat, where he paints miniatures and writes Monster Hunter books, to remind people to nominate and vote for the Dragon Awards where wrongfuns are still allowed to have wrongfun (and voting controls are non-existent), since the Hugos seem to have fallen back to the Tor SJW cabal. Aw, and I’d thought Larry Correia had gotten tired of the whole puppy thing and decided to focus on his career rather than piss off a whole genre.

John C. Wright is happy that his novel Iron Chamber of Memory placed third in the 2017 Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance Book of the Year Awards (the winner was Peter Grant – the writer, not the protagonist of Ben Aaronovitch’s Hugo-nominated series) and also notes that he was nominated for a best short story Hugo as the token white dude in that category. I guess he has finally realised that he can’t win that one and focusses on the awards he can win. Good for him.

Meanwhile, Brad Torgersen and the Mad Geniuses are conspicuously silent on the 2017 Hugos beyond some of the usual “Traditional publishing is dying and we are the future”.

Comments are still off – Puppies poop elsewhere.

*Town totally fictional

**Town totally fictional as well

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