Gillian Polack's Blog, page 258

Steampunk

I promised that I would give you the aggregated list of female writers who write steampunk. I hadn't forgotten - I've just been slow because this is a busy time of year. I'm doing pretty well, considering (and considering I'm at the stage in my novel where I want to damn the world and just keep writing - it's steaming up my brain and writing is the release valve). Anyway - here is your aggregated list. It's by no means a complete list. Just the books friends suggested when I couldn't think of either Gail Carriger or Cherie Priest.

Cherie Priest Boneshaker, Dreadnaught
Dru Pagliassotti, Clockwork Heart
Ekaterina Sedia, Alchemy of Stone
Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam
Gail Carriger, Soulless
Ginn Hale
Katie McAllister, Steamed: A Steampunk Romance
Lisa Mantchev The Theatre Illuminata Trilogy
M.K. Hobson, The Native Star
Meljean Brook, The Iron Duke
Possibly some of Mary Gentle's work


Also check out here: http://www.apexbookcompany.com/the-convent-of-the-pure/
Here: http://www.jhameia.com/2010/09/writing.html
Here: http://fantasyecho.livejournal.com/profile
And here: http://www.airshipambassador.com/aa-literature.html

Thank you, everyone - and happy steampunking!

gillpolack @ 2011-04-02T19:32:00

My birth certificate has appeared, magically, where I've kept it these last twenty years. After finding it in the wrong place, I obviously forgot I put it back in the right place. At any rate, I have three bags of paper to be recycled and only have one small stack to check through for other stuff. Also, I have all my work in piles, so I know what's urgent and what's not. I'm so carefully not looking at the urgent pile, or the bills I need to pay. It wasn't a wasted afternoon, but it was quite different from the one I had planned.

For the record, I was indeed born.

gillpolack @ 2011-04-02T14:13:00

The other day I found my birth certificate. "What good timing," I said. "I need this for my passport." Then I put it down, somewhere safe. That somewhere is so very safe that I've had to bring forward the Giant Paper Sort I had planned for the week after next. My loungeroom/working area is in a state (even for it) and I've found everything from undergraduate records through to ECGs done early last year.

No birth certificate yet, and a few other things will have to be put off, but I'm revisiting my last year and planning my next one and catching up on reading and postcards and little notes from friends, all at once. Also, my big table is actually almost visible, for the first time since I got sick. The small table has two feet of paper on top, but the big table is almost visible.

My paper recycling started in a bag, next to the big table, but is now a layer spread across the floor.

I'm creating a very special pile for things I should have done or that have to be done urgently. I'll add them to my work for next week. Which reminds me, work for today (before paper intervened) included a spreadsheet. I might get a start on that so that I can sit down for a bit (which is obviously why I'm doing this blog entry - I needed a cuppa!).

By the time I finish all this, I'm going to need a holiday. The only holiday I get this April, howeer, is the sort I used to get: intensive study period. During this time, I rather suspect I shall start to hide the table beneath much paper again.

gillpolack @ 2011-04-01T23:20:00

I ought to be working, but instead I'm still thinking of a woman I shall never meet. I've been thinking about her for several days now.

It's been a year for deaths, and more than one has been important to me. I can't help contemplating the legacy that Diana Wynne Jones has left, and how very important it is. She gave us a way of thinking about fantasy and a code to understand what we're doing; to how we're reading and how we can write. She spelled it out in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but she used it so very effectively in her novels that it changed the reading world and the writing world for many of us. It's a rare writer who can teach without preaching and who can write with such grace and charm.

And I've been thinking about this since I heard of her death and I've been wondering about what I should say and where I should say it. Her novels gave me the basic tools to do the analysis I've been working on all year, the stuff I don't talk about, except in terms of words completed. My way into literary criticism. Everything is so clear in her books.

Her books apply to the outside world with the same astonishing clarity. I was in Brisbane for the National SF Convention a few years ago, and the con was held in twinned hotels. Many of us became lost. Not once, but regularly. We ran into each other and found we had left from the same point but ended up walking in different directions. The corridors moved. There is a small group of Australians who still call it the Deep Secret Con. I'm hoping that we can get together for another Brisbane convention one day, and the group who experienced those strange corridors can drink a toast to Diana Wynne Jones.

gillpolack @ 2011-04-01T16:56:00

I keep thinking that I would like to see more of the real folklore of Europe used in fantasy novels, and especially the historical folklore. There's some stuff that's used over and again, but the depth and richness is generally lacking. I want to see blood rain in a novel*, and tequfot and Quatember. I want to see how minorities describe the days when they hurt because of what the majority does ('days of calamity' in pre-modern Judaism - the days when it was perfectly OK for people to throw stones at you or even murder you if you ventured out of doors). I want to see where the self-mockery comes into ritual and folklife and where the mockery of others. I want to see folklore that has bite and consequences and roots and leads to religious laws. In other words, I'm fascinated by the thought that fantasy novels have the potential to be as complex and as exciting and as tragic as real life.



*And in real life! Does anyone know when the Saharan sand gets blown into Europe and the rain brings it down in red drops? It is certain times of year? Does it only fall in certain regions?

Women's History month - overview

It's late Thursday night and March is nearly finished. There may be a couple of late posts for Women's History Month, because Australia is hitting the end of March earlier than some other countries. Also, there may not. It's been a difficult month for some of my friends, and they've had to bow out gracefully. Either way, it's been a totally wonderful WHM from my point of view. I've enjoyed the guest posts so very much! So have readers. Not many people commented, but a *lot* of people have been dropping in and reading. Thank you all, for sharing WHM with me.

I asked if I should do it again, and the answer was a resounding 'yes' and now I can't help thinking of all the women I haven't asked who have really interesting things to say. I might ask some of the same friends back, since we haven't even begun to see all that they are. I'm very, very lucky to know so many fascinating people (the men around here are pretty cool, too, you see, just not visible this March). You'll have to wait, though, to hear from them. Only eleven more months...

To help you while away those eleven months, here are the women you've met since 1 March, alphabeticised by first name. At the bottom of the list you'll find a couple of other links so that you can see how WHM has grown and changed in Australia over the last eleven years. If you explore those links, a few of the names in those earlier celebrations may be familiar to you.
Alyson Hill http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/777992.html 22 March

Amanda Pillar http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/780810.html 25 March

Anita Heiss http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/768308.html 8 March

Ann VanderMeer http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/763215.html 1 March

Anna Tambour http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/782142.html 26 March

Carole Wilkinson http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/776624.html 19 March

Cheryl Morgan http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/780122.html 24 March

Deborah Kalin http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/764577.html 3 March

Diane de Bellis http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/774644.html 15 March

Elizabeth Chadwick http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/784505.html 29 March

Erica Lewis http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/783141.html 27 March

Faye Ringel http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/773158.html 13 March

Felicity Pulman http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/777002.html 20 March

Glenda Larke http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/767394.html 7 March

Helen Lowe http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/774016.html 14 March

Jane Routley http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/780715.html 24 March

Jean Weber http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/785790.html 30 March

Jenny Blackford http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/777361.html 21 March

Jeri Westerson http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/770915.html 11 March

Another Damned Medievalist http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/777494.html 21 March

Juliet Marillier http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/786322.html 31 March

Kaaron Warren http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/766237.html 6 March

Kate Forsyth http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/770489.html 10 March

Kathleen Jennings http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/779667.html 23 March

Lara Eakins http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/763900.html 2 March

Lauren Roberts http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/778750.html 22 March

Lucy Sussex http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/772027.html 12 March

Lynn Viehl http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/768818.html 8 March

Marianne de Pierres http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/783683.html 28 March

Mary Victoria http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/782591.html 26 March

Maureen Kinkaid Speller http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/769228.html 8 March

Monissa Whitely http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/779207.html 23 March

Pamela Freeman http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/771526.html 11 March

Patty Jansen http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/774929.html 16 March

Rachel Kerr http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/775503.html 16 March

Satima Flavell http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/769642.html 9 March

Sharyn Lilley http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/765202.html 4 March

Sophie Masson http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/765907.html 5 March

Talie Helene http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/786642.html 31 March

Tamara Mazzei http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/781653.html 25 March

Tiki Swain http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/784195.html 28 March

Valerie Parv http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/776005.html 17 March

Wendy Dunn http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/772418.html 12 March

Wendy Orr http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/763062.html 1 March

A quick overview and the main site for Australia's WHM.

The archives of Australia's WHM at the National Library.

What our online discussions used to be like.

Next year, I think I'll have a coffee in the exact spot outside the exact coffee shop Helen Leonard, Lulu Respall-Turner, Veronica Wensing and I sat, when the big decision was made to actually have a WHM for Australia. Basically, Helen said "I want to do this. I have a plan. I need you." If anyone would like to join me in this coffee, let me know just a bit closer to the time (for my memory is fallible - I can't even remember if Veronica was there at that precise meeting, or came later! I'll have to ask her.)

Women's History Month: Talie Helene

I sat in a windowless basement room at RMIT University, the only female student in a music production class. We were studying a technique to process audio backwards in the digital environment of Protools, the industry standard recording software package. We were mostly focusing on techniques for editing around the transient of a drum strike while processed backwards, but also discussing some kooky effects that could be created with backwards audio.

The example the teacher was using, was a multitrack Protools session of the Brittney Spears song 'Baby One More Time'.

We'd been focused on the rhythm section tracks in the session.

One of the students announced, "There's supposed to be a bit in the second verse, where if you play it backwards, it sounds like she's saying, 'Sleep with me, I'm not too young.'"

The teacher processes the section of audio so that it's backwards, and isolates the vocal lead, and we listen to a stroke-victim cluster of syllables that might be interpreted as 'sleep with me, I'm not too young' by someone who really wanted to believe that's what they were hearing.

The student sitting beside me, shifted in his seat, and said, "Sleep with me, I'm moist and fun." He thought he was being terribly sophisticated.

The teacher got into the spirit of things, and made a wise crack, "I always thought Brittney Spears was a great loss to the fast food industry."

The whole room of boys laughed.

I was the only woman in this windowless basement room, and I felt my comfort in this group completely dissolve.

I'm not a fan of Brittney Spears as a singer. I'm not an admirer of her songs. But I find the way she is demonized in tabloid media to be completely absurd, and to be a kind of scrutiny that young men are not subjected to. And in my studies, we almost never looked at the work of women in the authoritative roles of studiocraft, so how we discussed female performers is pretty much the only discussion of women.

On campus, in class time, we used studiocraft to sexually objectify a professional performer, then suggest she more rightly belonged in a minimum wage unskilled job.

There are many disciplines where this would be unthinkable in a university context, but in music - objectification, marginalization, and dirty boys jokes are industry standard. And the teachers impart these values to the students without any critical cultural engagement whatsoever.

This is not the kind of music industry in which I want to participate. And this is one of my mild stories.

Talie Helene is a musician and writer. She has published poetry, fiction, and swags of music journalism. Talie is co-editor of The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror (Ticonderoga Press). She is transferring out of music production studies, and into performance. Her interdisciplinary exploits are chronicled at www.taliehelene.com.

Women's History Month: Juliet Marillier

We stand on our mothers' shoulders

When Gillian invited me to post here as part of Women's History Month, I immediately thought about the different ways in which men and women pass down their legacies to future generations. I touched on that in a scene from my novel Heart's Blood. Here, secular scribe Caitrin, employed to sort and translate family documents, is taking time to look at some garments stored in an old chest.

The library held the ink and parchment records set down by men. But that was only half the story. Women talked to their daughters and granddaughters, weaving memories. If no living women remained, one might still learn something from what they had left behind: a garden planted in a certain pattern, a precious possession set away with careful hands, a gravestone for a beloved pet. And clothing. I did not know who had owned these gowns, these delicate undergarments, but perhaps they had something to tell me.

Of course, times have changed. In western society there is no longer such a dramatic divide between the way women and men live their lives. It might be salutary, though, to remember that only half a century ago, women's expectations of how their lives would unfold were markedly different from those of today's young women.

My mother, Dorothy, was born in 1911, the cossetted only daughter in a well-to-do family with five sons, four of whom were adults by the time she was born. She had the misfortune to get polio as a three-year-old, and walked with a marked limp all her life.

Despite her wealthy family, Dorothy never set much store in physical possessions, except her piano, sheet music and beloved books. She was a talented pianist, one of the early female graduates of Otago University in Dunedin. She worked for a while in the family printing business, then as a piano teacher. Her family was less than delighted when she married her childhood sweetheart, Bill, a working class man who had left school at 13 to support his widowed mother and handicapped brother. Dorothy found herself cold-shouldered by her brothers and reliant for support on a husband who, though kind and loving, was a heavy drinker whose frustration at his missed chances in life sometimes made him moody and unpredictable.

My sister and I were born after Word War II, when our parents were already in their thirties, late by the standards of the time. I think they were often unhappy, with money quite tight and neither very good at balancing the budget. Dorothy resumed teaching piano from home as soon as we were both at school. That was unusual in the 1950s, when a woman was generally expected to stop work for good once she married. She was also in demand as a judge for eisteddfods, and had a regular gig as concert reviewer for the local paper. Our father remained in steady work, despite his deteriorating health. Both of them took great pride in our academic achievements, and it was my father's fondest wish that one of us would become a doctor – for him, the pinnacle of success. Neither of us took that path, and sadly, he didn't live long enough to see his eldest granddaughter graduate from medical school.

Dorothy was a deeply reserved, self-effacing person. Nonetheless, she was a wonderful and much-loved teacher and a knowledgeable, fair judge of musical performances. She was also a talented artist; after her death we found a box of beautiful paintings, drawings and etchings, mostly of trees and flowers. None was framed and hung on the wall during our childhood; all were laid away.

My sister and I have only recently sorted out the very small number of possessions Dorothy left, mostly her treasured books. Sadly, she sold her piano, her cherished china doll and her working desk in a time of financial hardship. As for personal writings, they're extremely scant. There is an extraordinary book in which she copied out by hand long passages from works of philosophy, her choices suggesting she thought deeply about the human condition. We found what seemed to be diaries, but after seizing on them with excitement, we discovered they revealed little. Two notebooks chronicle the purchase of a holiday cottage which she and Bill had for thirteen years in later life, and where he was especially happy. She records every expenditure from the princely sum of $1,100 for lifetime leasehold on the house to $1.65 for an ash-pan. She writes about planting a tree or painting a cupboard in the same matter-of-fact tone in which she records the birth of each grandchild in turn. Occasionally her true self shines through when she describes local birds, trees or seascapes – she had a deep appreciation of small blessings. It was not in her nature to spill out emotions, and I think that was common for most women of her generation. She was a wonderful listener, and took on board a great deal of my teenage angst without once showing shock or displeasure. Her own sorrows, she locked right away.

She left me a love of books and storytelling, a deep appreciation of music, an enjoyment of quiet and my own company, a love of the natural world. Her influence on me was enormous, and to a great extent I have stood on her shoulders when making my own life. Beneath her stands her mother, a feisty Scottish matron, and beneath her another woman, and beneath her yet another, all the way back to some Pictish crone spinning tales by the fireside. And of course, I have my own tribe standing on my shoulders – four fine adult children and five little girls who will in time learn their great-grandmother's story.


Note from Gillian: I didn't chase Juliet for a bio, because I don't think she needs one. I'm always finding myself in the middle of conversations about who gets to claim Juliet's writing - Australia or New Zealand. The last conversation of this kind was with a Romanian fan! For those rare and unfortunate souls who have not read her fiction and do not recognise her name, however, check here: http://www.julietmarillier.com/

gillpolack @ 2011-03-31T09:31:00

I've just been informed that it's International Hug a Medievalist Day. I'm looking around suspicously and wondering if I know whoever thought this up. Probably not.

Women's History Month: Jean Hollis Weber

My role in WEL Australia

None of the easily available information on the history of the Women's Electoral Lobby Australia mentions my role in setting up WEL's national office, though I'm sure it's well documented in the records held by the National Library.

(That's not a complaint, just an observation. Many women who contributed far more than I did aren't mentioned by name either, often by their own choice. But I thought I would take this opportunity to summarise my small contribution to women in Australia.)

I migrated to Australia in October 1974 and got a job in Townsville later that year. Fresh from feminist and environmentalist activism in California, I soon became involved with the Women's Refuge and the WEL group in Townsville. With WEL in Queensland and nationally, I could see distinct similarities to some groups I'd worked with in California: local groups served local needs very well, but lobbying at the state or federal level fell upon the groups in the capital cities. This resulted in a lot of work for the capital city groups and a lot of duplication of effort when local groups in, say, Townsville and Rockhampton wanted to lobby at the state level as well.

In 1976 or 1977, the National Conference was held in Brisbane, and I presented a proposal for a WEL National Office, to be based in Canberra. The proposal was based on a similar organisation that I had been involved with setting up in California under similar conditions. There was enthusiasm from some quarters (including women from several of the Queensland regional cities) and a lot of resistance from others. No decisions were made that year, but the seeds had been sown.

The 1978 National Conference decided to form a national office, employing a part-time National Co-ordinator, whose role was to liaise with WEL groups, other women's organisations, politicians and the media, to produce the National Bulletin, and to co-ordinate national WEL campaigns. Funds were raised and grants applied for.

By then I was living in Canberra. For several years I was the (unpaid) Secretary/Treasurer. The first National Co-ordinator, Maria De Leo, lived in my spare room for some time. This was convenient, since the Canberra Women's Centre was just around the corner from my house. Many of the early bulletins and other papers were printed on the duplicator in my garage.

The WEL National Office grew and developed during the exciting years of the early 1980s, leading up to the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984. I remember the celebration across the street from Parliament House (the old one), where my role was uncorking bottles of champagne with great enthusiasm, sending corks flying over the crowd until advised that someone could get hurt and I should desist... which I did.

Later I moved to Sydney, where I was not much involved in WEL, having moved on to other things. At some point I turned over my collected papers and other memorabilia to the Jesse Street Library. Not long ago I found a few stray photos from those early days and was reminded of both the excitement and hopes of the times, and the fact that although much has changed since then, much has stayed the same. But that's a topic for a longer essay and another day.


Jean Hollis Weber is a science and technology editor and writer, now retired from the paid workforce but still active in volunteer work with open-source software (primarily OpenOffice.org, a free alternative to Microsoft Office). She also writes and self-publishes her own books, maintains several websites, publishes Lyn McConchie's Farming Daze books, and travels extensively. In her spare time, she reads science fiction and fantasy and is active in science fiction fandom.