Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 142
May 16, 2011
Looking at Lists of Bests (again)
Last week, Tehani (@editormum) and Kirstyn (@fearofemeralds) started tweeting about the gender balance of the recent Guardian article, "The stars of modern SF pick the best science fiction". We discussed it with some other people at the time, but I wanted to note down some of my thoughts & responses to the article, as well as the discussion.
Thought the First: I totally love that people spot this stuff now and call it to Galactic Suburbia's attention rather than the other way around. In many cases, they parse it so we don't have to.
Thought the Second: I totally ran my eye down the page and thought: Okay, not many women are having their work nominated here, but it does look at least like they asked lots of women their opinions. My informal survey made me think the genders of authors asked to contribute was roughly even.
Just as the conversation started getting interesting, I thought I'd better check the numbers, and before I had even got halfway down the page, Kirstyn got in ahead of me:
@fearofemeralds
Best SF? Authors asked:16M/8F; Authors rec'd: 20M/4F. Only 1 M author rec's book by F (and yes, it was Le Guin's LHD): http://bit.ly/k5fH73
So that's some more interesting things. Half as many women as men were included in the article as providing recommendations – and that was enough for me, an active and switched-on feminist hobbyist-Table of Contents-critical-appraiser (no, it doesn't all fit on a business card) to think it was roughly even. When I saw what the real numbers were, I wanted to throw a cup of tea over myself.
Kirstyn presented the information that there were 16 men and 8 women surveyed, and yet 20 male authors were recommended, and only 4 women. She noted that only one male author recommended a book by a woman, and that it was Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness.
The Twitter conversation got a bit muddled at that point and I want to reiterate that none of us rolling our eyes meant anything derogatory at all to Ursula Le Guin, to that book (which is an acknowledged Great Work of the science fiction field) or to Kim Stanley Robinson, who chose it as his pick. It was an awesome choice, and he deserves kudos for remembering that women write science fiction too.
The reason there was eye-rolling is a carryover from many discussions we've (i.e. Galactic Suburbia and Friends) had about similar lists over the last year (The SF Signal MindMeld has been a common source for these) and more, which has brought up the anecdotal evidence that, when asked to recommend Great or Important or Best SF books, men are far more likely to produce lists of all male works, while women's lists tend to be more gender balanced. In a large majority of cases where men do recommend a work by a woman, it seems to be Ursula Le Guin and particularly The Left Hand of Darkness.
I'm not saying, I repeat, that this is always the case. But it's a common pattern, and one that interests me greatly. Why that book, in particular? Apart from it being awesome, which is a perfectly valid reason, why is that the science fiction book by a woman which seems to most often get remembered and recommended by men? More to the point, why are so many others consistently forgotten, unless the actual theme of the question specifies that we're talking about women's work?
Now, a list like this does not provide especially hard data about what people actually think, gender-wise. A list of one (which is what each author was asked for, individually, with no reference to each other's picks) is not the sort of thing that calls up conscious thoughts of balanced representation. It's only when a bunch of lists of one are put together into a list of, oh, 24, that the patterns start to look rather telling. I do think that this is at least partly how the sausagefest that is the SF Hall of Fame comes about (1 editor, 1 writer, 1 artist, 1 other, oops they're all blokes again) – though I'm not convinced that's much of an excuse.
On the other hand, as many of the MindMelds and indeed a lot of the last year's themed lists in the Guardian itself (not gender specific) have shown, there are plenty of people who, when asked to make a list of many authors or works, still manage to come up with all or mostly men.
(Which is not to say that anyone who mostly remembers or values works by men, especially in a field as male-dominated as science fiction, are sexist or anti-feminist or any of those things – mostly it just means those are the books they like, and everyone is free to like or dislike books based on their own preferences. It's just, you know, Worth Noticing The Patterns)
The information that jumped out at me from this particular Guardian list was not that almost all the men asked reached first for a male author or his work, but that 5/8 of the women also did. Again, this is not to criticise their choices. It's an excellent article in that every choice is presented and described in very personal, intimate terms. The unfortunate gender balance is a pattern that emerges from the article, and does not take away from the quality of the article or the individual responses.
Except… well. It kind of does, doesn't it? When you look at it as a whole. And I do wonder why only 8 women out of 24 were seen as enough. A list like this is almost always going to be male-heavy because of that old chestnut of men dominating science fiction (as if 80 years of ignoring women's work was a justification for continuing to do so in the name of historical veracity), but while I wouldn't have expected 50-50 in people's answers, why such a huge disparity in the people of whom the question was asked? Even if less than half of those women themselves picked other women, the article would certainly have felt more balanced with wider diversity in the people included.
Or were the Guardian, like my subconscious unthinking inner reader, happy enough with the gender balance as published because, you know, it sort of felt about even?
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May 15, 2011
Indulge Me?
There have been some lovely reviews (and sort of not reviews) of my work around this week. I am grateful for all of them! Having books which are talked about is an utterly joyful thing. Feel free to skip if any mention of my books is making you roll your eyes at this point. I promise plenty of Xena, Agatha Christie and gender politics blogging to come!
Over at Salon Futura, Cheryl Morgan says some excellent things about Power and Majesty. I was astonished to hear she was reading and reviewing it at all, since it's not a book generally available outside Australia and New Zealand. (an email this week made me crazy happy, from a US reader who heard about me from a guest blog I wrote last year, asked his parents who were travelling through NZ to pick up a copy of P&M for me, and they did so after visiting 3 different shops to find it – how awesome is that? Luckily he liked the book, otherwise that would have been embarrassing) Cheryl calls me brave in my writing choices, and has some beautiful explanation of what my books actually do. She also provides some very grabbable quotes:
"Fans of Storm Constantine might find a lot to interest them in this collection of fashionable, sexy, dangerous misfits."
"As fans of the Galactic Suburbia podcast might expect, it is also a feminist book. "
I always feel guilty when people overseas want to get hold of my work and can't, at least not easily. Here's hoping Creature Court is snapped up by one of those lovely US or UK publishers who agree with Cheryl that it should be more widely available!
A little closer to home, Random Alex has reviewed (or rather, not-reviewed) Love and Romanpunk – I'm glad she did write up her thoughts about this book, given that I dedicated it to her and all, but completely understand her hesitation to claim it as a real review. Still, at least she declares her biases! I think my favourite bit in the post is her response to what I did with Caligula in "Julia Agrippina's Secret Family Bestiary," which I will quote here because the other review of this book I'm going to quote from didn't like that story at all (YES, BEN, LOOKING AT YOU):
Then there's Ben Payne's review – and all teasing aside, Ben is one of those people whom I absolutely rely on to be honest about what he likes and doesn't like about my work. He's also been reading me & paying attention to my short fiction for a lot longer than most people – having edited my work before he even knew me, back in the old Andromeda Spaceways days!
Which is why this bit, in particular, bowled me over:
What's not often talked about, with Tansy's writing, is the fact that there is a real emotional courage to her best works, a sense that she is ready to get into her gumboots and rubber gloves and muck about in the messiest, ugliest, most confusing of human emotions and relationships, and to try to find a path through them. It's that depth of emotion, sometimes sweet, but just as often brutal and painful, that drives the best of these stories into being something a cut above the majority of works out there. The fact that they are also smart, and fun, is just the icing on the cake."
With comments like that, I can totally forgive him for not liking my Agrippina story!
There haven't been many reviews for The Shattered City yet, though it is interesting to note how many people are reading and reviewing P&M now that the second book is out. I have been eyeing the responses on Goodreads, though. Would it be far too self-indulgent to put up a post where people who have read Book #2 could comment about the surprisey bits without worrying about spoiling anyone?
May 14, 2011
This Week in Romanpunk: listening to Falco
I finally bit the bullet last month and signed up for a trial membership to Audible. I still have yet to find an audiobook that matches the story-reader glory of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys read by Lenny Henry, but I learned two important things from my search: 1) the narrator really does matter, and 2) audio books are a good way to reread, a pleasurable activity that I have found no time for in my life at all since I was pregnant with my first child (ie more than six years ago, yipes).
I've been flirting for years with the idea that I should read Jim Butcher, as one of the popular authors of urban fantasy, but never quite got up the incentive to do so. Until I discovered that his audiobooks are read by James Marsters. YEAH BABY. Sadly not James Marsters doing his dodgy British accent, but you can't have everything.
A joyous discovery in all my toothcombing of Audible's catalogues are not quite audiobooks, but full cast dramatisations (secretly I like these better than audio books) of the first five Falco books by Lindsey Davis. These used to be some of my favourite rereads, and revisiting them through such good close-to-the-text adaptations has been extremely happymaking. It's also getting my writing brain working towards the shape of my Nancy Napoleon books, and how much I want them to be influenced by (and pushing against) the traditions of detective fiction.
There are many things I love about the Falco books, especially the first five or so. They conjure up a vivid image of Ancient Rome as a real place people lived in – not a completely authentic version perhaps, with plenty of tongue-in-cheek postmodern jokes, and characters occasionally displaying a suspiciously 20th century attitude to issues like slavery and the (lack of) rights of women – but nevertheless a very convincing piece of scene setting, rich with historical detail, and solid under your feet. It gets so much more right than it gets wrong, and I particularly like the variety of freedoms, roles and power allowed to female characters. Anyone wondering how to address gender issues in fantasy novels based on historical periods without alienating the modern audience could learn a lot from these books.
Then there's the characters, the marvellous and memorable people of the stories. I love complicated families and right from the beginning we get two of them: Falco's sprawling tangle of sisters, bad husbands, grotty children and the tragicomic figures of his parents as well as the absent dead hero brother he can never live up to; and Helena Justina's stiffly formal aristocratic clan, perfect on the outside, and full of political traitors, flakes and disappointments once you peel back the layers. Lindsey Davis has a gift for snappy dialogue (my favourite thing in the world) and this makes the stories not only crackle as they dance between humour and grim situations, but also makes them perfect for radio adaptations such as these.
But the aspect of the Falco novels that's most clicking with my brain right now is the way that they desconstruct the hardboiled detective novel. Right from the opening page we get his voice, full of rich observational detail, wit and cynicism, introducing us to the mean streets of Rome and a pretty blonde girl in trouble. The first three books set up just about every detective novel archetype only to interrogate and puncture them, either with humour or with a reversal of expectations. We never, for instance, got to meet Philip Marlowe's mother, or spent much time wondering how Spenser paid the rent in the lean months. Falco comes with human baggage, a metric ton of it, and while he tries to play the smooth, ruthless investigator, no one ever lets him get away with that kind of self-importance.
So listening to these lovely plays, featuring Anton Lesser and Anna Maddeley as Falco and Helena, is constantly making me think about the choices I am making with Fury, my Nancy Napoleon novel. Urban fantasy is strongly influenced by hardboiled crime, and that was something I emphasised when selling the idea of it to the Australia Council. Looking at how this author has taken apart the tropes of detective fiction to make a modern, warm and bags-of-character story, and the various choices she has made (to dripfeed family history and baggage over several novels, for example) has my writerly brain buzzing, and I rather suspect I'm going to have to go back to the source and inhale some Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and other classic detective novelists. Just when I thought I was done with the whole crime thing, as a writer…
I don't suppose James Marsters narrates those, too?
May 11, 2011
Galactic Suburbia Episode 32 Show Notes
New episode up! Grab it from iTunes, by direct download or stream it on the site.
EPISODE 32
In which we bid farewell to Joanna Russ, talk e-publishing (again) and Alisa reads a real live actual book. With bonus raving about Doctor Who and Alistair Reynolds – in other words, another episode of Galactic Suburbia.
News
On Joanna Russ:
Making Light
Broad Universe Samuel Delaney interviews Joanna Russ
Aqueduct Press
Barb & Jenny on e-publishing
Part 1
Part 2
Book Country launched by Penguin USA
Jim Hines on Book Country
Ellen Datlow on the role of the short story editor, at Book Country
Brimstone Press closing
for Illustrators of the Future
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott, Fringe Season 3
Alex: Deep State, Walter Jon Williams; Shattered City, and Love and Romanpunk, Tansy Rayner Roberts; Pushing Ice, Alastair Reynolds; Troubletwisters, Garth Nix and Sean Williams.
Tansy: Doctor Who & Big Finish audio plays. The Eighth Doctor Adventures.
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Announcing upcoming Spoilerific Book Club on Joanna Russ with particular focus on The Female Man, How To Suppress Women's Writing and short story "When it Changed." Read along with us!
Galactic Chat interviews Glenda Larke
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don't forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
May 8, 2011
Festival of Tansy!
The final posts of my Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom have gone up. Here's the complete list – and thanks to all the people who volunteered space on their blog for me to chatter away. I was particularly grateful for the various topics I was given to write on – I certainly couldn't have blogged that much without being so inspired by the topics.
The Shattered City Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom.
Craft, Magic & Women's Work (Voyager Online)
The Long and Short of It (Intrepid Reader)
Friday Hoyden: Jean Marsh (Hoyden About Town)
There And Back Again, by A Fantasy Author (The Journeyman Writer)
My favourite Creature Court outfits (Egoboo)
Australian Women Writing SF (The Best Audience)
On Getting an Australia Council Grant (K A Bedford)
Why the Creature Court & what Sources Did I Use? (Castle Books)
The Mega Tansypost of Doom (Helen Merrick)
Fandom: The Next Generation (Jo1967)
On Middle Books and Broken Cities (Kate Gordon)
Of Swords and Breakfast (Fablecroft)
Aufleur and Rome (Random Alex)
The Story of Book 2 (Trent Jamieson)
Backstory and the Ties That Bind (Larvatus Prodeo)
My Urban Fantasy is a Little Further Away (Nicole R Murphy)
The Fabric of the Universe (Lauredhel)
Living With a Writer (Bridal Cupcake)
Every Book is a Special Snowflake (Champagne and Socks)
Contemplating Other (People's) Worlds (Adventures of a Bookonaut)
When is a Vampire Not a Vampire? (AsIF)
I've also had some great reviews go up recently of my books, of which two of my favourites are by Jason Nahrung and Stephanie Gunn.
And I've been reviewing again over at Last Short Story, with posts on Aussie YA anthology The Wilful Eye and stories from various anthologies & Nightsiders by Sue Isle.
So basically it's all about me!
May 5, 2011
Book Launched!
Apologies for the lateness of this report (I was getting to it, Thoraiya!) but suddenly I blinked and half a week had gone by. This happens to me a lot.
On Tuesday night, the ever wonderful and community-minded Hobart Bookshop hosted a launch for me and The Shattered City, Book Two of the Creature Court. As a delicious bonus, Love and Romanpunk was also available for sale. I had been a little uncertain about whether to launch this book – considering each volume of the trilogy are coming out so close together, I had fretted a bit about whether I was over egging the pudding, or expecting too much of my family and friends. But I was talked into it pretty easily, and as I said recently to someone else – you have to celebrate the wins. After several years of no book to launch, I absolutely need to mark the successes while they are happening.
Also, as it turns out, my family & friends have been developing a bit of a taste for book launches. Bonus attendee points to Isabel, who since the last launch has bobbed her hair, acquired a pink flapper dress, and on the day itself scored herself a cloche hat as an early mother's day present. Now that's commitment!
The reliable and mighty-voiced Dirk Flinthart drove for three hours to launch my book, and I was startled to realise afterwards that he had never done so before (the launching thing, not the driving thing) – what with Craig Wellington last year, it looks like I have a habit of giving people their launcher debut! Dirk gave a lovely speech, showing how long we have known each other (TEN YEARS) and how familiar he is with the development of my work, as well as his utter faith in where I'm going next. It was exactly what you'd want from such a speech, and considering that the majority of people in the bookshop knew me, it was nice to have something so personal.
There was wine and book chat, and general loveliness. I am terribly grateful for my rent-a-crowd, who can comfortably fill a bookshop, but are also willing to buy books – not only the pile of The Shattered City, but the pile of Love and Romanpunk was beautifully eroded, and I got to sign many, many books. Thanks to Mel A for giving me a head's up reminder beforehand that I was going to have to think of new clever things to write in the books! Being witty on cue is terribly stressful.
Then of course there was what has become a family tradition – the dressing up of the children! After several experiments, Jem proved to be less than keen on a costume, so I put her in a jungle t-shirt and a tutu. Raeli meanwhile had known for ages what she wanted to be: having dressed up as a mermaid for Seacastle and a black cat for Power and Majesty, she had her heart set on a lion costume. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another. I ended up having to source the costume on the day itself, and was faced with very limited choices. Luckily she is a creative little thing and was happy to think outside the box for her lion-y look.
I was also excited that there were a few (only a few, admittedly!) people there who I didn't even know personally! Who also bought books! Bless their little cotton socks. There was even a committed future reader from the US who contacted the bookshop to order Power and Majesty and The Shattered City ahead of time, so I could sign them for him! With so much love & support, it's no wonder that I've been feeling terribly inspired to get on with writing the new book this week…
May 4, 2011
Win Love and Romanpunk!
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
Giveaway ends May 31, 2011.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
May 1, 2011
Love and Romanpunk
It's May, which means my gorgeous book Love & Romanpunk is officially released! Yes, there were copies of this floating around Swancon last weekend, but those were extra special early copies that were available thanks to my wonderful publisher, Alisa.
Words cannot express how proud I am of this book. It's really only the last few years that I have started thinking of myself as a short story writer as well as a novelist, and finding my feet as far as the kind of short fiction I really want to write. When the Twelve Planets project gave me the opportunity to write four stories of any length I liked, I knew I wanted them to connect to my obsession with Roman history. Luckily for me, Alisa was hard-nosed enough to pick out the two stories I had written that she loved, and kick the others to the kerb. "More like this, please."
Possibly she didn't say please. *grins*
So I was pushed harder than I ever have been with my short fiction, to bring this collection together. And I love it to bits. It's made up of so many things that I love: the history of the Caesars, unreliable and secret histories, manticores, lamia, historical recreationists, and snark. I am so glad I got to do something with the sneaking suspicion I had, all through my doctoral studies, that the sisters of Caligula might have been superheroes. My influences are as wide and varied as Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
And I discovered an eternal truth: that if you put Livia and Agrippina in the same book, only one of them gets to be the hero.
Ah well, I'll give Livia a book of her own, one of these days.
Nearly ten years ago, I went to Rome and spent a month walking on those old streets, hunting out statues of the imperial women of the Caesars, in research for my thesis. That one month of my life has probably proved more inspirational to my work than any other. It is present in every book of the Creature Court trilogy and it was present here, as I wrote these stories.
Did I mention there are manticores?
Let us begin with the issue of most interest to future historians: I did not poison my uncle and husband, the Emperor Claudius. Instead, I drove a stake through his heart. In my defence, several of my close relatives have been vampires, and I have had little occasion to kill any of them. Claudius was a special case.
Special thanks goes to Amanda Rainey, who created such a marvellous cover and did the layout etc. on a very short time frame, and also to Helen Merrick, who wrote an amazing introduction. And of course, the book would not have happened without the commitment, energy and vision of publisher Alisa Krasnostein, of Twelfth Planet Press. I am very fortunate to be friends with and supported by such amazing, intelligent and talented women.
You can order Love and Romanpunk from the TPP webstore, individually or as part of a subscription to the Twelve Planets series of collections.
April 28, 2011
Galactic Suburbia Episode 31 Show Notes
There's a new ep up! Yes, already. This is the one with the things in it we couldn't quite squeeze into our live episode. Grab it from iTunes, by direct download or stream it on the site.
EPISODE 31
In which we do a quick (ha) awards round up and squee about the Swancon that was.
News
We wanted you to read this review and be appalled
An issue to be addressed that we want more women reviewed … but not like that.
(but then they edited the review out from under us, so you can be appalled by that instead)
Hugo nominees have been released.
Ditmar, Tin Duck & other Australian award winners (including us!)
Wanted to draw attention to when Tansy won the Atheling and Grant Stone as MC said she was the first woman (invisibility of women)
1979 – Susan Wood, "Women and Science Fiction", Algol 33, 1978
2007 – Justine Larbalestier for Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century
2009 – Kim Wilkins, for "Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction"
2010 – Helen Merrick for The Secret Feminist Cabal: a cultural history of science fiction feminisms (Aqueduct Press)
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don't forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
April 27, 2011
On Awards, At Length
As I mentioned earlier, the awards night on Sunday (full results here) was a very emotional one for me! And brought in a rather hefty stack of what we football fans refer to as 'silverware' for myself and some very good friends. I've been to a lot of Ditmar ceremonies over the last decade or more that I've been attending cons, and this is only the second time that I've had fiction even nominated, so to win Best Novel with what is, let's face it, my 'comeback' novel, means a lot to me.
Especially because this year's shortlist was so strong, made up of books I love and works by writers I really respect (didn't quite manage to read the whole shortlist before I got to the con) and I would have been genuinely glad to see any of those novels win.
But I'm so proud of Power and Majesty, and so pleased by its overall reception, and it's hard not to be supremely grateful that people are
Winning the William Atheling for Criticism and Review for my Modern Women's Guide to Classic Who was also deeply meaningful to me – I love this blog, and writing reviews, and you all know how I feel about Doctor Who & feminist commentary, so the fact that it was that particular series of posts that earned me another shiny trophy is something I feel very good about. Having a set of book ends like this does suggest I'm doing a good job of balancing my professional and fannish work!
Then there are the awards I shared – Galactic Suburbia won the Ditmar for Best Fan Publication in Any Medium, and the Tin Duck (Western Australia specific fan award) for Fan Production. As you can see, both sets of awards don't have a problem with the 'are podcasts fanzines' debate! I had been delighted to see GS nominated for these awards along with many other podcasts because I tend to see the awards shortlists as important historical documents, and it was lovely to see the 'year of Australian podcasts' commemorated in this way. But much though I love all of our fellow podcasters (and projects) I was awfully delighted about these ones. We love our podcast and it has been completely humbling both at Swancon this weekend and at Worldcon last year to have so many people come up to us and say "you changed the way I read."
Considering feminist commentary is often thought of as a rather niche concern, it's also very exciting how often those people are men, though I have to say it's no less awesome to hear women tell me the effect that Galactic Suburbia has had on the way they look at things.
Finally I had a very small share of the Ditmar for "Best Achievement" which was won by last year's Snapshot. Yes, another new media project! Taking part in the Snapshot is always frantic and exciting, and inspiring at the same time. Last year, it was Kathryn Linge who took the helm, organising and encouraging us all, and while many of us have our name on that award (and we all got to kiss Sean Williams when accepting it, of course!) she was the one who put in the hard yards to make it happen.
So you know it wasn't just about me, I was also squealing and whooping about many of the other winners. Alisa puts in so much work at Twelfth Planet Press, and I think has really lifted the bar of what we expect from indie SF press in Australia – I loved Sprawl, and I think it's her best anthology yet, so hooray for her taking out the 'Best Collection' Ditmar and 'Best Professional Production' Tin Duck. Other Sprawl related awards included Amanda Rainey getting the Tin Duck for Best Professional Artwork for the cover art, Pete Kempshall getting the Tin Duck for Best Short Story for "Signature Walk," and Cat Sparks' "All The Love in the World" (one of my favourite stories from last year!) getting one of two Best Short Story Ditmars (tying for first place with Kirstyn McDermott's "She Said" from Tales From the Second Storey).
Random Alex and Tehani have both been reviewing furiously and consistently for some years now, and so it was exciting to see them take out the Ditmar for Fan Writer and Tin Duck for Fan Written, respectively. I also yippeed for Thoraiya Dyer (whose "Yowie" from Sprawl is up for an Aurealis Award) getting Best New Talent. I not only love Thoraiya's work, but have been excited to see how quickly she has gone from first publication and first award noms last year to – with her sale to Cosmos early this year – her first pro sale. All that plus her excellent TPP stories! Thoraiya caused many people to go "awwww" when she took her 2 year old daughter on stage for both of her Ditmars, the other being for "The Company Articles of Edward Teach" – this was a story I really loved last year, and thought would fall under the radar because it was published so late in the year. So hooray for that too!
Fan Artist of the Ditmar went to Amanda Rainey too, in this case for the Swancon 36 logo, which I have to say is hard to argue with when you're staring at the gorgeous design of this year's Ditmar & Tin Duck trophies (in true cyclical fandom tradition, she designed this year's trophies featuring said logo, and promptly won several of them). She also tied for first place with Christina Lorenz for Fan Artist in the Tin Ducks. Amanda's been doing such great work in the SF community over the last few years, mostly unpaid despite her high professional skills, and it's lovely to see her time and effort rewarded with some trophy love.
Oh and yes, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann won for "some short film" as Jonathan charmingly put it, while presenting the award. It was one of those things where – well, it would have been completely embarrassing if anything other than the Oscar winner had taken the prize, though it would have been rather amusing if Shaun had beat himself with his other nominated work.
Back to the Tin Ducks, I think the only award I haven't mentioned is Juliet Mariller's Best Long Form for Seer of Sevenwaters – I loved her original Sevenwaters book, and didn't know this one existed, so hooray for awards, now I can seek it out!
There were a few other non-affiliated awards, of which the one of most interest to me was the NORMA, of course. This year it was won by A A Bell's Diamond Eyes, which I shall promptly seek out. The thing that seems most interesting to me up front is that they changed the award this year to include disability along with race, gender, etc. as themes that the award was looking for, and it seems from the blurb I have read that disability is a strong theme in this particular book. Watch this space for my feedback!
OK I have to go now and record another Galactic Suburbia, so I will just close by saying that it would be hard to beat the energy and love and positive vibes that I felt in the room when I picked up my own awards, and cheered on so many of my friends and colleagues while they did the same. So many smiles, so much genuine happiness! There was a time when I definitely did not feel as much a part of this community as I do today, and it was just plain nice to have so many people express their support. I do apologise for my (honestly I don't remember what I said) rather garbled thank you speech, but I was so completely overwhelmed at that point that I'm surprised I was able to form words. That was probably the only moment of the con when I really wished I had after all brought my honey and my daughters all that way on the plane with me, so they could be a part of it all.
This whole winning trophies thing is aces, but it's really, really new to me, as is this huge wave of excitement about my work. I am well aware that it's not something that happens every year in a writer's bumpy career, so intend to enjoy it while I can.
