Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 171

Periodic Table of SF Women – the meme

I'm really pleased with this meme and the surrounding discussions for many reasons. One of the most frustrating responses I heard to the 'Before they were Giants' discussion, itself the latest in a long line of TOC rows, was the kneejerk "but there just aren't as many women who are giants in the field."

It makes me want to throw something every time someone says that, or something like it, in response to a feminist discussion. The person is usually unthinking and often well-meaning – to...

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader

Written by Neil Gaiman, pencilled by Andy Kubert, and inked by Scott Williams.

Yep, another one from the Graphic Novels Hugo Packet!

This two-issue mini-series of Batman comics was commissioned to bring the iconic Detective Comics title to a close, and to provide a moment of closure before Batman was once again reinvented for a new audience of readers. Neil Gaiman, who also writes an introduction to this graphic novel, was pretty much given free rein to write whatever he wanted, and he...

Links of Wonder!

I have recently ordered Alaya Johnson's new book Moonshine, and there is a new book trailer circulating which is very cute and fun. Is it too soon to be excited that between this, and Libba Bray's upcoming series, and the Speakeasy anthology coming out from TPP next year, we might have a different spec fic/historical movement on our hands? More 1920's fantasy goodness please!

Grant Watson, aka  angriest has joined the podcast revolution! His Bad Film Diaries podcast has its first episode...

Launched!

It's funny, you can be keyed up and preparing for a big event like, oh I don't know, a book launch, for weeks and weeks, and then suddenly it's over in under two hours. Blink blink blink. I'm pretty sure it was good, because we came home, got the kids to bed and then promptly collapsed in a heap of exhaustion.

That might have something to do with the cold meds I'm on.

The Hobart Bookshop put on a lovely, cruisy book event. New authors, I recommend you fling yourself on their mercy! They...

Galactic Suburbia Episode 8 Show Notes

Episode 8, our Special Feedback Episode is now available to download from the Galactic Suburbia site! You should be able to get it from iTunes shortly too.

News we discussed:

Lambda Awards LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror winner:

Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam/Spectra Books)



Valente also signing on as Apex editor



Theodore Sturgeon Award shortlist

Tansy's new book release and launch of Power and Majesty tomorrow, June 3 2010

Sad news about Diana Wynne Jones who has ceased chemotherapy to...

A Letter to Diana Wynne Jones

Dear Diana

I discovered you by accident. A snippet of a kids tv show that fascinated me from the start – and turned out to be Archer's Goon. Then, quite by chance, I found that book and snapped it up, figuring I could at least find out the parts that I'd missed on TV.

Shortly after this, I discovered that you were a REAL author with a whole list of books and I was pretty much lost. This was the tricky days to be a DWJ fan, and it involved a lot of hunting through second hand shops to...

In Acknowledgement

It's Book Release Day! Let there be ribbons and honeycakes and rioting in the street. In the mean time – well, I never got my act together enough to write a proper acknowledgement page in time to get it into the book. I told myself I'd save it for the final volume – much as I refused to go to my first two graduation ceremonies on the grounds that I'd be getting my PhD sooner or later and it's the sort of thing you should only do once. Or some other excuse for being slack.

But Power and...

Changeless, by Gail Carriger

Yes, I grabbed this one as soon as I saw it (spotted in an actual bookshop no less!) and gobbled it up pretty damn fast. While Changeless didn't feel quite so intense as its predecessor Soulless, I was impressed at how comfortably the world set up in the first book continues. While there is a fairly enormous gap between the world of the Parasol Protectorate and actual Victorian London, I would take Carriger and her Alexia over Charles Dickens any day of the week.

It's hard to discuss this...

Twas the Night Before

Power and Majesty is officially released tomorrow. In case, you know, you missed the memo. I feel like I'm in a surreal kind of bubble at the moment. Raeli and I seem to have spent the last three days in our pyjamas, watching TV, baking cupcakes and playing maths games on the computer. Both my girls have been sick all weekend and now I've come down with it too, nursing a cold all day.

My honey, when I reported this to him, responded with alarm. "But what about your VOICE?" Hehehe, good t...

Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages

Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)

Another freebie from the Hugo Packet. Like Girl Genius, Fables is one of those things I've been meaning to get to for some time. It sounds on paper like it is exactly the sort of thing I love to read: a world that takes fairy tale images and iconography and does something new and inventive and ...