Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 64

Cold White, Ink Black, Romanpunk

Some lovely announcements to do with my writing this week, from my two favourite publishers.

Tehani Wessely at Fablecroft has put up freebie copies of two Ditmar Award nominated stories: “Cold White Daughter” by me, and “Mah-Song” by Joanne Anderton. If you’re voting in the Ditmars this year (and even if you’re not), do download the stories and check them out.

I’m very proud of “Cold White Daughter,” which is my love letter to several favourite authors from my childhood: C.S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Enid Blyton.

You can also download a sample of my Ditmar Award nominated novel, Ink Black Magic. For the month of May, to celebrate the nomination, the book itself is available half-price, so if the sample appeals to you, there’s never been a better time to buy it!

Twelfth Planet Press has also had a busy week! Not content with the frankly awesome Pinterest page devoted to the Twelve Planets macarons that Terri made for a recent cocktail party at Swancon, Alisa has announced that her award-winning series of female-authored collections is going to have a Thirteenth Planet by none other than Isobelle Carmody. I’m so excited about The Moth Cycle!

Here’s Alisa’s speech from Swancon about how the Twelve Planets have been received thus far.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’m also tickled pink (purple!) that my own collection, Love and Romanpunk, is having a second print run for sale during Worldcon in London. The book has been out of print in hardcopy for a while now, so it’s lovely to have it back. I hope to be spending some time at Alisa’s stall in the dealer’s room hand-selling them! The print run will be limited, so you can pre-order your copy here.

Thousands of years ago, Julia Agrippina wrote the true history of her family, the Caesars. The document was lost, or destroyed, almost immediately. (It included more monsters than you might think.)

Hundreds of years ago, Fanny and Mary ran away from London with a debauched poet and his sister. (If it was the poet you are thinking of, the story would have ended far more happily, and with fewer people having their throats bitten out.)

Sometime in the near future, a community will live in a replica Roman city built in the Australian bush. It’s a sight to behold. (Shame about the manticores.)

Further in the future, the last man who guards the secret history of the world will discover that the past has a way of coming around to bite you. (He didn’t even know she had a thing for pointy teeth.)

The world is in greater danger than you ever suspected. Women named Julia are stronger than they appear. Don’t let your little brother make out with silver-eyed blondes. Immortal heroes really don’t fancy teenage girls. When love dies, there’s still opera. Family is everything. Monsters are everywhere. Yes, you do have to wear the damned toga.

History is not what you think it is.

But wait, there’s more! TPP have also revealed the cover and table of contents for Kaleidoscope, the anthology of diverse YA science fiction and fantasy stories which was crowdfunded last year. My story, “Cookie Cutter Superhero,” is the teen girl superhero story I have always wanted to write, and it’s especially exciting now I see who I am sharing the Table of Contents with. What an exciting bunch of writers!



Table of Contents:

“Welcome” by Will Alexander

“Double Time” by John Chu

“Celebration” by Sean Eads

“The Truth about Owls” by Amal El Mohtar

“Careful Magic” by Karen Healey

“Chupacabra’s Song” by Jim Hines

“Ordinary Things” by Vylar Kaftan

“Every Little Thing” by Holly Kench

“End of Service” by Gabriela Lee

“Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon” by Ken Liu

“The Day the God Died” by Alena McNamara

“Signature” by Faith Mudge

“Kiss and Kiss and Kiss and Tell” by E. C. Myers

“Happy Go Lucky” by Garth Nix

“Cookie Cutter Superhero” by Tansy Rayner Roberts

“Walkdog” by Sofia Samatar

“The Lovely Duckling” by Tim Susman

“Krishna Blue” by Shveta Thakrar

“The Legend Trap” by Sean Williams

Pre-orders will be opening soon, so stay tuned!

Friday Links is Out of Touch

So, we’ve just come back from a family holiday in a fake Swiss village with very limited wifi, which means I’ve been completely out of touch about some of the more essential news this week. Still playing catch up, thanks to my friends.

Like for instance, I didn’t know that Bob Hoskins had died. So sad! I’ve always been terribly fond of him as an actor, and while I know he did a bunch of great stuff, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the first movie I ever saw multiple times in a cinema and I love it to bits. (I still remember the lovely little cinema near the flat where I was living in York at the age of 10, which only charged £1 entry) Grant Watson wrote a great piece about his favourite Bob Hoskins films over at The Angriest.

I also didn’t realise (until I got an email from Tehani talking about it in conjunction with something else) that the Stella Prize had been awarded. I KNOW, RIGHT? Congratulations to Clare Wright for The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

And of course I also missed the post-Stellas controversy, but Sean the Blogonaut writes very well here about why Nicole Flint’s article in the Advertiser completely missed the mark.

Tehani, meanwhile, wrote a fantastic piece about the current state of SF and Fantasy in Australia right now – very sharp and comprehensive!

Erika Ensign blogs about something I think all devoted readers can empathise with – how finishing a wonderful book or series feels a bit like a small death, and how hard it can be to find the next book to love (after observing a suitable mourning period).

Now a few I collected before I went away:

Malindo Lo gives her answer to the regularly-heard question of “Should white people write characters and cultures other than their own?” An essential read for all writers, really – as Malinda’s answer shows how layered the question is, and how no answer is ever going to be as simple as we might want it to be.

Ladybusiness lists 15 SFF books coming out this year that she’s super excited about. Now I’m excited about them too!

And one late entry just before I hit ‘publish’ – Foz Meadows on why Politics Belongs in Science Fiction. A vital piece that sums up the most recent Hugo discussion with incisive commentary.

Friday Links Starts Robbing Banks.

The Wired talks about Matt Fraction and writing realistic sex into comics with the new title Sex Criminals.

“They do what any young, fun, sex-having sexy persons would do after discovering their sex-having freezes time and space,” says Fraction. “They start robbing banks.”

Kat Mayo at The Drum writes about the way that romance novels (and the women who read them) get sneered at regularly (often in the name of “feminism”) by journalists who actually don’t know anything about the genre with Dear Columnists, Romance Fiction Is Not Your Bitch. The comments made me cranky.

Meanwhile, a comics commentator receives rape threats after she critiques a Teen Titans cover. Her original post is well worth reading, as it sums up just about everything that’s wrong with the lack of foresight in current policy at DC Comics. If you can’t be bothered to design a Teen Titans comic to appeal to actual current teenagers (and in particular, teenage girls, who represented a substantial part of the massive audience for the Teen Titans animated series a few years ago), then what is the point of you?

On a personal note, I was very pleased that E Catherine Tobler, one of the first people to speak out publicly in the wave of dissent against the SFWA Bulletin this year, was so very encouraged by the content of the recent issue that I edited.

And speaking of SFWA, Maggie Hogarth weighed in on recent Hugo debate via honey badger cartoons.

Greg Rucka blasts the fake geek girl myth.

After Sue Townsend’s recent death, a reprint of her powerful essay about what poverty really means.

The Chosen Mum: Coming of Age in Yonderland.

Over at Tor.com, Katherine Addison (the new writing identity of Sarah Monette) discusses the Coming of Age trope, and mentions how often it is assumed that the default hero of such a story will be male – stories traditionally tell us that when girls become women, their “story ends” when they get married, while men get to transition into kings, heroes, magicians, etc. She also notes the general assumption that a Coming of Age story will be about the transition between childhood and adulthood, even though there are other points in people’s lives when a growing up/transition/levelling up story is relevant.

There are some great developments of some of Addison’s ideas in the comments, especially the first one by Dr Cox, which quotes Laura Ingalls Wilder:

Around the time of WWI, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in Our Darling Daughters that before her marriage, her dreams ended with the marriage and that “when a girl was successfully married there would be nothing in her life afterward worth making a story about” but that “Greatly to my surprise, I found that with my marriage the story had hardly begun and since then I have found life daily more engrossing and worth while as I have watched and experienced the changes in the life and ideas of women” (from A Little House Reader, ed. William Anderson).

This is so completely relevant to the post I’ve been burning to make about the kids fantasy TV series Yonderland, that I knew I had to write it RIGHT NOW OKAY. So here we are.

If you haven’t yet discovered the TV series Horrible Histories, which is a brilliantly mad educational comedy sketch show that presents the grotty underside of history to a generation of children who think poo is hilarious (ie all generations of children ever), then you have something to look forward to. Start by searching for some of their songs on YouTube, which will give you some idea of the talent, gumption and humour (as well as historical rigour) behind the show. I have been particularly pleased with the way that the creative team – five men and one woman who write and perform the majority of the material – shine a light on gender and race issues, and include so many different kinds of women in the stories that they tell.

Which is why, when we ran out of Horrible Histories and I found out that the exact same writing-performing team had created a fantasy series, Yonderland, I ordered the DVD without delay. I didn’t quite know what to expect. The promotional art looked a bit pantomimey, and there were puppets… which is one of those things that can go either way, you know?

What we got was a compelling and subversive portal fantasy with a funny, progressive script (“Bit racist” notes the Elf when the heroine thinks his name is too complicated to remember), some fabulous design work, a mishmash of historical influences (they stole their costume designer back from Horrible Histories, hooray!) and a show made with great dedication and love. Plus the puppets turned out to be pretty great.

The five male members of the team play the majority of the roles in Yonderland, which lends a Monty Python-esque feel to the world, where you might see the same actor playing 4-8 parts in a single episode, and yet the clever costumes etc. make it clear that they are different characters. It also means that, apart from the occasional dragged-up crone, some lady puppets, and the occasional cameo from one of the many other women who performed in Horrible Histories, Yonderland can be a bit of a sausagefest.

However, the reason for this is that Martha Howe-Douglas, the only woman in the core creative team, is our central hero. And she’s wonderful.

The premise of the show is that all of the other magical lands have fallen to darkness, leaving only Yonderland surviving, and that they desperately need a Chosen One to cross over from “our” world and save the day. Only they’re a bit fuzzy about the details on how that’s going to be achieved, because the infamous second scroll has been lost.

The creative team have been interviewed about the initial idea for the show and how they didn’t have a clear idea at first about who that Chosen One would be – a kid, a teenager? But because Martha was the only woman in the team, they wanted to give her a prominent role, and so they hit on the frankly brilliant idea of The Chosen Mum.

Debbie Maddox has spent the last five years chasing her high-energy twins around the house (we never see the children as anything but a blur) and cleaning up after her earnest and sweet husband. Now the kids are off to school and she’s not quite sure what to do with herself – finding some “me time” is traditional at this point, yes? At which point, an elf appears in her larder and drags her through a portal to save Yonderland. You know how they always SAY that the skillset of the stay-at-home-mum should count as the equivalent of running your own corporation, when writing a ‘back to work after long maternal break’ CV? Well, it turns out that for Debbie Maddox, her mum credentials have prepared her beautifully for saving a magical kingdom.

Problem-solving, negotiation, some basic magic and active parenting all come to the fore as Debbie takes on a variety of quests in between making the lunches, cleaning and picking up the kids from school. Some of these quests may involve attending a spa for a lovely relaxing time, or visiting the race of fluffy creatures who want to compose a song in her honour, but only when she’s wavering as to whether the hero life is for her…

It’s hard to express through words how much I love this show. Mothers are mostly invisible in fantasy – and it’s so very rare to have a fantasy adventure (especially one aimed at children!) in which a Mum is the most important character. I also like that the series delves into Debbie’s feelings of guilt, ‘trying to do it all’ and not wanting to let her family down even as she gets more and more invested in her portal adventures – but these are resolved through compromise and her acceptance that being a hero might be a job (and frankly an unpaid one) but it’s one she gets a great deal of personal satisfaction from. Enough, at least, that it counts as her deserved and justified “me time.”

(Let’s not delve too deeply as to why a professional freelance writer might feel so sympathetic to this particular storyline)

I also like that Debbie’s kids are actually irrelevant to the story as characters (in that the story only happens when they’re not there), though they are constantly on her mind as she juggles her responsibilities. We do, however, get an interesting on-screen portrayal of her relationship with her husband – they are a team and they are friends, and it never occurs to her not to tell him about her magic other life (though somehow circumstances make this impossible). Meanwhile, her husband is searching for his own lifestyle satisfaction by pursuing a dream as an amateur actor, which Debbie finds a bit far-fetched (this from a woman who talks to a grumpy magic stick regularly) but learns to accept and support.

This is a kids show about how adults need to have something in their lives other than wiping up messes, driving you to and from school, and earning a living to put a roof over your head, and makes it clear that they are not selfish for following their dreams. WHEN DOES THIS EVER HAPPEN IN KIDS TV? I adore the fact that my daughters enjoy this show so much, and are absorbing messages about how Mums deserve to have their own magical adventures when the kids aren’t around.

Apart from the gender issues (which are omnipresent and multi-layered), Yonderland also provides all kinds of other subversive takes on traditional fantasy tropes.

One of my favourite episodes unpacks the myth of chivalry and knighthood in all kinds of interesting ways, looking at the inherent class issues, power imbalances, courtly love (tournaments include kissing contests!) and the undeniable fact that most medieval knights were probably arseholes. The main villain of the series, Negatus (Simon Farnaby) plays up and against all kinds of “Dark Lord” traditions, appearing pretty much as an example of middle management, at a career plateau after reaching his level of incompetency – but still relishing many of the trappings of villainy, especially the decor and fashions. Debbie often treats the Elf (puppet voiced by Matthew Baynton) who is her main companion and guide to Yonderland, as if he is one of her children, despite the fact that he is a middle aged, cynical adventurer with a grotty sense of humour.

All is not as it appears.

Oh and speaking of the grotty sense of humour, the layer of jokes “for the grownups” peppered through the adventure can be surprisingly filthy, but tend to be so quick that you almost miss them, and the kids can usually be distracted from asking what they mean if you don’t laugh too long and hard. “Seriously did he just say that?” is a common refrain. There’s also a dark streak to the comedy, hinting at a lot more gore and gruesomeness in this fantasy world than we ever see on screen.

Yonderland wears its influences on its sleeve, an unabashed love letter to Henson fantasy films like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, to Monty Python, to children’s books like The Wizard of Oz and The chronicles of Narnia and to history itself. Once you get used to the mix of medieval, Renaissance, Regency and Victorian steampunk all jammed in together, it makes for a charmingly chaotic world.

But it’s Debbie, the Chosen Mum at the centre of it all that makes this series really special – a pragmatic, capable heroine who is constantly doing a double take at the insanity of the world that has chosen her as its champion, but also falls in love with it along the way. The more challenges she succeeds at – whether it’s righting the wrongs of a tournament of evil, slaying a fire dragon, stopping two idiot Gallants from killing each other out of mutual politeness, organising an impromptu soccer match to bond her ragtag team before they save the day, and so on – the more she comes to realise just how capable she is of handling just about anything… as long as the quest is complete before the school day ends!

Yonderland is a coming of age story, not of a child becoming an adult, but of a parent emerging from the pressured, all-consuming pre-school years and stepping into the light.

And I think the message here is that more mothers could be fantasy adventure heroes, if flexible hours were available.

Galactic Suburbia the John Campbell Memorial not a Hugo Episode Show Notes

Two Galactic Suburbia episodes in one week? What the WHAT? Don’t panic, podcast minimalists, this one is totally not an episode. Sure, it might involve me, Alisa and Alex talking about the Hugo shortlist for an hour and three quarters, but that doesn’t mean it’s a podcast. It is what it is.

Go check it out! You can download or stream the latest Galactic Suburbia at our Podbean site.

In which we do discuss the Hugo shortlists both Retro and Current, but this is not an episode. Not at all. For… administrative reasons.

Retro Hugo Shortlist 1939.

Hugo Shortlist

Brandon Sanderson says interesting things about fandom groups, and the Wheel of Time nomination.



Some gender notes on the Hugo shortlist

Tansy’s Hugo links post

Tansy & John DeNardo of SF Signal discuss the shortlist on Coode Street Podcast

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO NOMINATED GALACTIC SUBURBIA FOR BEST FANCAST, WE LOVE YOU TOO. WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH WE WOULD GIVE YOU FIVE STARS ON ITUNES.

Galactic Suburbia 98 Show Notes

Forgot to put these up on Sunday! Episode 98 is now available to download or stream directly from the site.

In which we approach Fringe from multiple sides, rant about Game of Thrones, muse about cake lit and Alisa is a PhD student again! Bonus supplemental awards chat (but not in depth about the Hugos because we recorded before the shortlist went public) and an invitation to CAKE OUT for our 100th. See you there…

Culture Consumed:

Alex: Fringe s1; A Million Suns, Beth Revis; The Crooked Letter, Sean Williams;

Tansy: Game of Thrones rant, Jenny Colgan novels, Jago & Litefoot 7, Yonderland!

Alisa: Game of Thrones; Generation Cryo; The Cuckoo by Sean Williams, Clarkesworld Issue 91; the PhD Report

Aurealis Awards were awarded.

(sidetracked: Before the Internet from XKCD)

Hugo nomination

CAKE COMPETITION! For our 100th episode, we would like to have a new logo. On a cake. Designed by you. Send a picture of your creation and you could win… something… and you can eat the cake, too. (This is episode 98, so you’ve got 4 or 5 weeks to plan your creation.)

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!

Hugo Links are Linkworthy

Lots of discussion about the Hugos this year! Hardly surprising since it’s a more-chaotic-than-usual blend of joy and WTFery. Something for everyone, right?

I’ll point you again to the great chat I had on the Coode Street podcast with Jonathan, Gary and John DeNardo of SF Signal – we went into the bloc/slate voting issue and talked about the ballot in quite a lot of depth.

Liz Bourke, nominee on the awesome Best Fan Writer list this year, talks about her own reactions to the ballot, and why she’s voting for Abigail Nussbaum. She particularly goes into some of the gender issues that I also talked about on Coode Street, with a special shout out for the shifting Best Professional Artist category. Finally, some balance!

Abigail Nussbaum shares her own response to this year’s ballot, and her nomination as Best Fan Writer.

Natalie Luhrs at the Radish shares her conflicted feelings, with bonus GIF illustrations. Thanks to the shitstorm that followed in the comments section of her blog, she wrote a follow up about daring to speak up about issues in the community that concern her – and why it’s so important to talk loudly about things that upset you.

Doctor Who News reports on all the Doctor Who themed nominees, including some charming quotes from Steven Moffat who joins me in wanting Peter Davison to win the Hugo this year for The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

Tor announces that the entirety of Wheel of Time will be in this year’s Hugo packet, free to voting members. Whoa! I know that many readers like me will want to burst into tears rather than cheer at the thought of receiving quite so many free books with bonus pressure to read them in just a couple of months, but despite that I think it’s really cool of them as a publisher to make that gesture.

Ian Mond from The Writer and the Critic is quite pleased to be nominated in the Best Fancast category. That might be a slight understatement. Go, Mondy & Kirstyn!

The Verity! crew are also delighted to be nominated in this category – if you’ve never listened to Verity! before, check out our welcome post and list of favourite episodes from last year.

John Scalzi shared some Hugo thoughts, first briefly and then at greater length to address whether or not this year’s shortlist was “rigged.” (short answer: no it wasn’t, technically, but that doesn’t mean we have to like how some of the works arrived upon it)

Carrie Cuinn talks about what she’s voting for, and has some sensible words about the Hugos. Vote for the thing you like best, that’s the point of it all!

Many other people have said many things about this shortlist, some of which I agree with and some of which I really don’t. Add links in the comments to other posts you think we should be reading!

ADDED: Jim Hines lays out why the Hugo issue is more complicated than just ‘bloc voting is bad!’. I also recommend you read down the comments far enough to see Laura Resnick’s take on the issue.

ADDED: Bibliodaze on Vox Day and the Hugos – Why We Should Just Say No.

ADDED: The Ferrett on The Problem With the Hugo Awards and “Shouldn’t It Be About the Work? On White Dudes Getting Award Nominations.

The Chauvelin Effect

Talking with my friend Isabel the other week, I wanted to put a name to the specific phenomenon of enjoying an actor in something, and retrospectively realising that actually they were in something else REALLY MEMORABLE AND SIGNIFICANT to you a long time ago, but you never made the connection that they were the same person. It’s like a kind of actorly deja vu only without any sense of remembering they are familiar and you have in fact seen them in things before. So the complete opposite of how I usually watch any TV/movies from Britain, which consists of pointing out all the actors who have been in Doctor Who, Press Gang or Carry On Movies.

I wanted to name the syndrome after Rupert Graves, as I am still frankly recovering from the retrospective shock of discovering that the actor who played Jolyon Forsyte (my favourite character) in The Forsyte Saga was the same actor who played the floppy-haired Freddy Honeychurch in Room with a View back in the distant 80′s.

Isabel, however, argued quite rightfully that actually this phenomenon could only be named for the experience we had both shared, of rewatching the classic Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour version of The Scarlet Pimpernel in the 21st century, only to discover that the reason we remembered Chauvelin as being really excellent and acting everyone else off the camera was in fact because he was played by SIR IAN FREAKING MCKELLEN.

I’ve had a couple of experiences of the Chauvelin Effect lately, so very glad that I now have a name to put to it when relating the anecdotes.

There was a TV series I really liked in the 90′s called The Riff Raff Element – and unlike everything else on TV I loved in the 90′s, I didn’t manage to commit it to video tape, so I only ever watched it once. It’s the kind of show, though, that burrows inside your head, so every time you see an actor for it in someone else, you relate them back to it. Or so I thought!

I recently found the second season of the show randomly on YouTube – and thus had the quite surreal experience of watching Season 2 of a TV show twenty years after watching Season 1 and yet needing no catch up at all, because it felt like I’d been watching it only yesterday. (Yes, in case you are wondering, this did make me feel exceptionally old) And there was Celia Imrie, and that actress who I later saw as a New Ager in Ab Fab (Mossie Smith), and that actor who I always think looks a bit but not quite like Peter Davison (Nicholas Farrell), and the one who always says No No No Yes in The Vicar of Dibley (Trevor Peacock) and so on. For those who like to spot Doctor Who connections, Ronald Pickup plays the oppressive posh Dad, and his apologetic eldest son Morty went on to play a Silurian torturer in New Who… but anyway.

Watching Season 2, I couldn’t help wondering what happened to the actor who played outraged bohemian Alisdair. He was quite good, really. Nothing familiar at all about him, largely because I remembered him so clearly for this role, but his name didn’t ring any bells. So I did what you do now, and Googled his name. Only to discover that he is married to Emma Thompson. And THEN the name sounded familiar, Greg Wise as in Willoughby from Sense and Sensibility. Turned out he had also been in Cranford which I had watched only a month or two ago.

Of course, little dawning revelations like this don’t actually mean anything to anyone unless they’ve watched the exact same things that you have. Luckily I had friends who were into costume drama who could appreciate this particular gem. But having a name like ‘The Chauvelin Effect’ does make it all seem a lot more important!

My latest example wasn’t at all twenty years in the making, but made me smile. One of the benefits of having a paid subscription to the BBC iPlayer is that I get to catch up on shows that I missed when they came to Australia – or to see shows that never made it here. It’s never really recent shows but frankly I’ve got nine years of TV to catch up on since becoming a parent anyway.

This week I discovered Watson and Oliver, a really fun comedy duo writing and performing sketch comedy. They reminded me a lot of French and Saunders, and I really liked many of their running gags and regular characters, which is totally what you want from a sketch comedy show. Episode 1 featured a fun use of guest star John Barrowman, as the two comedians set him up to sing a love song to them both, and he ended up singing a love song to himself.

This theme was continued across the season, with the “real life” versions of Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver continually trying to one up each other with their amazing talents, leading into the musical number at the end. At one point, Lorna reveals she’s in the running for playing the new Bond girl, while Ingrid beats her by being in the running to play the new James Bond, and they reminisce regularly about how David Tennant is always stealing the parts that Ingrid really wants to play. In the final episode of Season 1, they stage their own Olympics ceremony on the cheap, at least partly because Ingrid is jealous that David Tennant got to run with the torch and she didn’t (I think this is a Doctor Who reference because I’m pretty sure he didn’t in real life).

And today, having enjoyed the show, I thought I’d look up if they had done anything else beyond their show, only to discover to my genuine surprise that Ingrid Oliver played Osgood in Day of the Doctor – the UNIT assistant with the Tom Baker scarf, whose combo of labcoat and asthma puffer (and scarf) made her such a darling of the cosplayers. Even having seen her play at least 12 different characters in her sketch show, including a disturbingly convincing teenage girl, I was really stunned that it was the same actress, and kept going back and forth between pictures to check.

So apparently the Chauvelin Effect is still viable even if the first thing you saw someone in is less than six months ago.

I don’t care if it never catches on with anyone else, I am totally citing this as a phenomenon in future. But next time you find out that a completely unfamiliar actor in a thing you like, turns out to be an actor you saw in something else ages ago that you totally should have remembered, you know what to call it!

Though if you decide to call it the Freddy Honeychurch Effect, I will not judge you.

Hugo Nominations are Shiny!

Another year, another Hugo shortlist. There’s so much to talk about! I was simply bursting with opinions as I read through it this morning, and so I was really pleased to be snapped up by Jonathan Strahan to share some of those opinions with him, Gary K Wolfe and John De Nardo of SF Signal over at the Coode Street Podcast.

Sadly thanks to family plans, technical difficulties and a conversation that lasted way longer than we intended, I had to run away shortly after the Editor categories and so wasn’t able to share my major opinions about Professional Artist, Fanzine, Fancast and of course the category that I won last year, Best Fan Writer (well actually I did note my opinion on that one in the intro to the podcast, referring to that particular shortlist as a thing of beauty).

Tune in anyway to hear me champion Wheel of Time’s place on the ballot, squee about the sheer bonkers variety in the Best Related Work category, and begin my dedicated campaign to getting Peter Davison a Hugo. Come on, you know it makes sense.

I was delighted that both Galactic Suburbia and Verity were nominated in Best Fancast – and imagine my surprise to learn that we were in a shortlist of seven instead of the usual five! Very pleased to see our friends and fellow Australians the Writer and the Critic join us in the most fun category of all, and for fellow veterans Coode Street and SF Signal to hang in there with us. Also welcome to two more cheery travellers, Emma Newman’s Tea and Jeopardy (the only podcast with a butler, as far as I’m aware – more of us should follow in her footsteps) and the lovely Skiffy and Fanty crew. Hooray for Fancast! And thanks so much to those who nominated, helping to support this new and occasionally unappreciated category.

I’m still catching up on Hugo commentary, controversy and gossip – gathering links etc. I’ll put a post up in a day or two, and hopefully we’ll be doing a Galactic Suburbia chat about the shortlist in depth too (the episode that goes up later tonight only briefly mentions it as it was recorded when we knew we were nommed but not who else was).

In the mean time, though, let’s just have another look at the glory that is this year’s Best Fan Writer category:

Liz Bourke

Kameron Hurley

Foz Meadows

Abigail Nussbaum

Mark Oshiro

I KNOW, RIGHT?

I am very happy that I’ll be at Loncon this year, representing Galactic Suburbia and Verity, and that I won’t be the only member of either podcast there!

Friday Links Wants a Touch Screen TV

Tobias Buckell talks about a topic very dear to my heart: Tech and Five Year Olds

Karen Gillan’s Hair will Appear in Star Wars V. Not Karen, just her hair.

The issue of clothes and women in politics is a sticky one – on the one hand, it was frustrating as hell to see former Prime Minister Gillard constantly having her fashion discussed ahead of her policies, and that Prime Minister Abbott’s clothing choices were never policed as closely as those of his daughters. But as this post on departing Governor General Quentin Bryce notes, fashion choices can be a vital political tool for women. And frankly I have also taken quiet pleasure from the sight of her bright and undeniably feminine outfits in a sea of black business suits. What I wasn’t aware of was the degree to which Bryce’s feminism informed her time in office. If we have to have dames in Australia again, she’s a pretty good choice. As long as she also gets a white charger and a lance as part of the ceremonial bumpf. The lady would look good in jousting armour.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly the Orange Prize, is now the Baileys Prize. Smooth. Very excited to see an Australian crime novel on the list – Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, which the universe keeps telling me I have to read.

Marianne De Pierres has been on a nonstop blog tour for her new futuristic Australian Wild West science fiction novel, Peacemaker. She wrote a guest post here on my blog on the topic of My Female Heroes.

Gwendoline Christie is interviewed – this classy actress is one of my favourite things about Game of Thrones.

Very sad that we lost Sue Townsend this week, a witty and warm writer who captured decades and decades of British life and pop culture references through dark humour with the Adrian Mole diaries. I loved and hated Adrian at the same time – those books were so much not fun to read, while at the same time being incisive and brilliant. I have a soft spot in my heart for her novel The Queen and I, which is an alarmingly post-modern piece of science fiction about a reality that never happened, in the guise of a domestic comedy of manners.

The following video put an idea into my head. An idea of Kristen Bell and Amy Adams co-starring in Harley and Ivy, the musical comedy. I now can literally not think of anything else. Why does this movie not exist already??? It can also be a Broadway show.