Kassandra Jo Tomaras's Blog, page 6

Revised Nebula Ballot: Beauty Is a Wound

I have revised my Nebula ballot to remove Laurus from the Novel category and replace it with Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan. It sits very comfortably in the tradition of magical realism. It begins with a prostitute rising from her grave after 21 years, and ends with an invisible lover falling prey to a revenge murder. Along the way, a courtesan learns to fly, a gangster ascends to heaven by attaining meditative moksha, and a thousand communist ghosts torment their murderers. Yet for long...

Tentative Nebula Nominations

Since I joined the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) last year, I am now eligible to nominate works for their Nebula Awards. The following are my tentative nominations. I say tentative because ballots can be revised until the end of the nomination period on February 15th. I do have at least one novel from last year which I am hoping to get read before then, and am always open to recommendations of shorter works that I may have missed when they first came out. The following...

2015: A Year in Review

My Stories

I wrote a few, and continued submitting many more for consideration for publication. Three were published this year:"The Assassination of Alexis Tsipras" was so near-future that it may already be out of date. Why bother assassinating someone when he has already suicided all the ideals for which he claimed to stand?"The Joy of Sects" was my favorite of my stories that were published this last year, though it is certainly not above critique. If you, reader, are eligible to vote for aw...

Not Even Heinlein: Is SEVENEVES the Worst Book of 2015?

In a year in which Chuck Tingle prolifically described various ways of getting pounded in the butt by implausible objects, it may be beyond the ability of any one human being to choose a worst book from the year 2015. Yet a strong case can be made for Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, which was without doubt the worst book published in 2015 that I have read to date.

Ordinarily I do not make time for bad books, and decide within the first few pages of a novel whether I should just return it to the l...

Agatha Christie as Science Fiction Writer

My wife is engaging in one of her obsessive, completist projects, attempting to read all novels ever published by Agatha Christie. She just completed The Big Four, first published in 1927, and then asked me when lasers were invented.

"The 1960s," I answered while peeling a carrot. (To be precise, the LASER was invented in 1960.)

She then showed me a passage in the book which, to her mind, sounded much like a laser: "some powerful wireless installation--a concentration of wireless energy far bey...

A Note on Reading Louise Erdrich

What could be worse than to never outgrow the tastes and preferences of your 15-year-old self?

As an early college freshman, I was made to read something by Louise Erdrich. I don't remember exactly what. Perhaps an excerpt from Love Medicine, or a short story, included in the sort of anthology that is designed for expanding the literary horizons of college freshmen. I didn't like it. That was to be expected. I was on a High Modernism kick that never really ended, and I had little experiential...

On aging and the relative attractiveness of men and women

One does not read Michel Houellebecq for the progressiveness of his politics. As it happens, if one is me, one does not read Michel Houellebecq very often, for any reason at all. But the current issue of The Paris Review included an extract of Submission, and I read it, to see if I might be interested at all in reading the book. (Spoiler: I am not.)

The extract is of a subgenre that has been all too familiar, ever since Henry Miller: Heterosexual man writes from the point-of-view of his penis....

I Lied: A Few More Words about the Hugos

I rarely watch movies. The last time [spouse] and I saw a film in the theater together was before she even got pregnant with our first child. That child is now seven-and-a-half years old. Rarely, also, do I feel moved to seek them out on DVD. I don't even have a Netflix subscription. The only reason we have cable is that, where we live, Time Warner has a monopoly on passable internet connections. When [spouse] lost her job, we cut back our cable subscription to the minimal 20 channels. One ni...

My Last Word on the Hugos

Best Related Work: I'm not even going to bother reading the materials in the voter's packet. Because this is not an aesthetic category, but an opinion category, in my opinion there are no aesthetic considerations that could override the political imperative to slap down the canine slates.

1. NO AWARD.

Best Graphic Story, Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Best Professional Artist, Best Fanzine, Best Fancast, Best Fan Artist: I don't care about these...

Hugo Short Story Ballot

"Totaled" by Kary English is too good a story to be tarred with the brush of a slate. It makes good use of not-as-far-future-as-those-unfamiliar-with-the-field-might-think neuroscience to explore the mind-body problem, the relationship of emotion to cognition, and the furthest limits to which careerist self-sacrifice can drive a person. I wish it had first appeared either in a free online venue, or a magazine with broader circulation than Galaxy's Edge.

Lou Antonelli's "On a Spiritual Plane" a...