Martha Wells's Blog, page 56

Hardcover Murderbot and Books for Monday

Tomorrow (Jan 22) is the re-release of The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red in hardcover, to match the rest of the series. It'll have the same art, but a new design to include the "New York Times Bestselling Series" and "Hugo and Nebula Award Winner" on it. :)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/all-systems-red-martha-wells/1125315290?ean=9781250214713#/

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Also coming out soon:

I loved the first book and I've been looking forward to the sequel. This is an awesome epic fantasy:

* The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty
Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked from her home in Cairo, she was thrust into the dazzling royal court of Daevabad—and quickly discovered she would need all her grifter instincts to survive there.

Now, with Daevabad entrenched in the dark aftermath of a devastating battle, Nahri must forge a new path for herself. But even as she embraces her heritage and the power it holds, she knows she’s been trapped in a gilded cage, watched by a king who rules from the throne that once belonged to her family—and one misstep will doom her tribe.


This is the sequel to The Sisters Mederos, which I just finished reading last week and really enjoyed. Regency high society with magic and sisters who become dashing bandits and gamblers to get revenge.

* Fog Season by Patrice Sarath
After the shocking events of last summer, the high society of Port Saint Frey has plenty to gossip about. Who was the Gentleman Bandit? Why hasn't he been captured? And what really happened that night when the Guildmaster disappeared? When the Guild hires Abel Fresnel, a detective with special powers of his own, to find the answers, Tesara and Yvienne Mederos have to avoid his probing questions and keep mum about their role in the events of that dark night. Everything's more or less under control until a dead man turns up in the dumbwaiter...

Coming in March

* New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl



Short Stories:


* A Priest of Vast and Distant Places by Cassandra Khaw


* Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Fear by Senaa Ahmed


* Bourbon, Sugar, Grace by Jessica Reisman

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Friday

There's a thread on Twitter from Gail Simone https://twitter.com/GailSimone/status/1086275965355941893 about awkward/weird convention moments.

I've had so many I honestly don't remember them well but one still stands out. It was at a convention in 2014 or 2015 (after the first few Raksura books had come out and after my Star Wars novel was out, but long before Murderbot. I think the second Emilie book, Emilie and the Sky World, was about to come out.) I got added to a panel at the last minute, because two of the other writers on it had had to leave. It was on writing fight scenes, and was in a fairly big room, with a full audience.

So I got there early and was one of the first to arrive, and I put my name tent on the table. One other panelist was already there, and he was someone I hadn't met before. He takes me aside and tells me about the other two writers who had to leave early and wouldn't be here (which I knew) and how they were very big deals, and that the audience was expecting a lot, and how they had this panel every year, and it was a big deal, and that the audience would ask questions, hard questions, etc, and how he had already asked another important writer to be here so I really wasn't needed.

He was basically kindly giving me the head's up that I wasn't cool/important enough to be on the panel and should leave before I embarrassed myself.

I didn't leave, it turned out to be a fun panel with fun panelists (with one exception) and I was the most experienced writer there, so.

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Ten Year Meme

There was a post on Twitter about looking back on what you were doing ten years ago in 2009 and how things had changed. I posted:

10 years ago I was in the middle of my career crash, unable to sell anything, really depressed but still writing The Cloud Roads.

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Reprints of All Systems Red and Raksura Books

* On January 22, The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red will be re-released in hardcover to match the other three novellas.

* Night Shade Books is going to reissue the first three Books of the Raksura in mass market paperback. The Cloud Roads will be out this Fall, and The Serpent Sea and The Siren Depths will be out in 2020.

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Monday Stuff and Hugo Noms

Nominations for the Hugo Awards are open now. If you're a member of the 2019 WorldCon (in Dublin, Ireland) or were a member of the 2018 WorldCon (San Jose, California, USA) you can nominate. If you haven't gotten your nomination link from the convention yet, you have to contact the committee directly. Due to EU regulations, they aren't able to send you email without your permission first.

https://dublin2019.com/hugo-awards-wsfs/the-hugo-awards/

If you're eligible to nominate, please do. Having a wide range of nominations helps keep the awards reflective of the wide range of great work that was published last year.

The SF/F news site File770 collects links and recommendations for various categories here: http://file770.com/2017-recommended-sff-page/

The only things I had out that were eligible were the three Murderbot Diaries novellas: Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy. They're eligible in the Best Novella category. (And If you decide you want to nominate one, Exit Strategy might be the best choice.)

The Murderbot Diaries are not eligible for the Best Series category. (It doesn't meet the word count requirement.)


More info: http://www.thehugoawards.org/


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We had a friend come visit this weekend and mostly ate and watched movies. We saw Crazy Rich Asians and Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse, and I'd seen both before but they really reward repeat viewing, especially Spiderverse, which I think is a perfect little jewel of a movie. When you already know what's going to happen, you have a lot more time to really absorb all the cool detail and foreshadowing.

Saturday night we went to the historic downtown area which the city has been working on for years. When I first moved here to go to college, it was basically a few streets worth of collapsing buildings. Now it's mostly restored, with a lot of businesses, shops, restaurants, offices. The big restored hotel has opened a room in the basement and runs it like an old Speakeasy. It's only open on certain times on the weekend and so Saturday night we went to see if we could get in.

There's no sign, you have to ask at the front desk how to get down to the basement. Then there's still no sign so you wander around trying to figure out where the music is coming from until you find the door with the big square old-fashioned peephole that slides open (protected by an iron grill). We knocked, but not loud enough. We're standing there trying to figure out what to do and then a door opens behind us and a guy comes down the hall and says, "You have to knock louder" and bangs on the door. My husband recognized him as the mayor. (The real mayor, not a pretend roleplay speakeasy mayor.) So the door opens and it's very dark and all the staff are in 30s costumes and there's a bunch of people drinking and talking on couches. (I suspect it was too clean and friendly and relaxed to be much like a real speakeasy, but it did look like one.) And some cops (real ones) showed up briefly and left. When I went to the bar to get drinks, the bartenders were complaining that it was hard to roleplay a speakeasy with the mayor and cops wandering in and out.

Anyway, that was our weekend.

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New Book Thursday

(If you've been following my book rec and new book listing posts for a while, you may have noticed this already, but while most book lists emphasize books by popular straight white men, this one emphasizes everybody else. I include books by straight white men, but in about the same percentage that other book lists include everybody else. I also try to highlight books that are less well known.)

(I only link to one retail outlet in the book's listing, but most books are available at multiple outlets, like Kobo, iBooks, international Amazons, Barnes & Noble, etc. The short stories are usually on free online magazines.)


* Short Story The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker


* A Cathedral of Myth and Bone by Kat Howard
Captivating and engrossing, and adorned in gorgeous prose, Kat Howard’s stories are a fresh and stylish take on fantasy. “Kat Howard seems to possess a magic of her own, of making characters come alive and scenery so vivid, you forget it exists only on the page” (Anton Bogomazov, Politics and Prose).


* The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty
S. A. Chakraborty continues the sweeping adventure begun in The City of Brass—"the best adult fantasy I’ve read since The Name of the Wind" (#1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir)—conjuring a world where djinn summon flames with the snap of a finger and waters run deep with old magic; where blood can be dangerous as any spell, and a clever con artist from Cairo will alter the fate of a kingdom.


* The Girl King by Mimi Yu
Sisters Lu and Min have always known their places as the princesses of the Empire of the First Flame: assertive Lu will be named her father's heir and become the dynasty's first female ruler, while timid Min will lead a quiet life in Lu's shadow. Until their father names their male cousin Set his heir instead, sending ripples through the realm and throwing both girls' lives into utter chaos.


* The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.


* Unravelling by Karen Lord
Dr. Miranda Ecouvo, forensic therapist of the City, just helped put a serial killer behind bars. But she soon discovers that her investigation into seven unusual murders is not yet complete. A near-death experience throws her out of time and into a realm of labyrinths and spirits. There, she encounters brothers Chance and the Trickster, who have an otherworldly interest in the seemingly mundane crimes from her files.


* The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Sophie was a college student before being exiled from the city on suspicion of treason. Driven into January’s glacial night side to die, she is rescued by the planet’s native inhabitants. Long hated and hunted by humans as animals, these extraterrestrial beings known as the Gelet not only save Sophie, but form a telepathic bond with her in an attempt to build a bridge between their species.


* Serial Box Ninth Step Station by Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Curtis C. Chen
Years of disaster and conflict have left Tokyo split between great powers. In the city of drone-enforced borders, bodymod black markets, and desperate resistance movements, US peacekeeper Emma Higashi is assigned to partner with Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Miyako Koreda. Together, they must race to solve a series of murders that test their relationship and threaten to overturn the balance of global power. And amid the chaos, they each need to decide what they are willing to do for peace.


* Book List 105 Books SF/F Editors Can't Wait for you to Read in 2019

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Wednesday Stuff

I broke 50,000 words on the Murderbot Diaries sequel novel yesterday, and that's probably a little over to about halfway done. It's been a hard row so that's a relief. The second half will either go very smoothly or be as much of a hard grind as the first half was, I can't tell.


I have three appearances coming up this year so far:


August 15-19, 2019. WorldCon Dublin in Dublin, Ireland.

October 4-5, 2019. Brown County Library ComicCon at Central Library in Green Bay, WI.

October 18-20, 2019. Capclave in Rockville, MD.

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The Harbors of the Sun Review

I'm going to re-post some things here that got deleted with my tumblr:

Here's one of my favorite reviews of The Books of the Raksura


Review by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun of The Harbors of the Sun
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/the-harbors-of-the-sun-by-martha-wells/

A quick and dirty description of the series as a whole that I’ve seen Wells herself use is “bisexual, polyamorous, matriarchal, shapeshifting flying lizard people.” This is absolutely correct. However it’s also more of the “who” than the “what” of the series. The what of the Raksura books is more complicated and subtle. If you had asked me what the series was about before reading The Edge of Worlds and The Harbors of the Sun, I would have answered that it was about a young man finding a home and his people after being on his own for too long. I would have said it was about rediscovering family and learning to trust again. Those answers are all still true, but now I realize that this series is also very much about a community constantly under attack, how they deal with trauma and continue fighting to survive and find a safe space.

Without giving away too much, Moon starts the series isolated and ignorant of his people because of an attack on his birthplace; and the results and reactions to this and other attacks that happen within the books affect every character deeply and in different ways. In between the exciting action scenes, characters are dealing with feelings of abandonment, PTSD, and the reverberations of sexual assault through whole families and communities. These heavy subjects are no less well depicted for the series’ being set in a secondary fantasy world. Wells handles them with subtlety and grace, so they slowly build almost within the background of the series, book by book. For example, there are a few characters in the series that are born as the result of sexual assault and while this is never ignored, it’s also not focused on too closely. However, in The Harbors of the Sun we, along with the characters, are forced to confront more directly what life would be like for those taken and forced to impregnate their captors and where they might find some consolation. (That sentence is a great call out to the book, so after you read it? Make sure to come back and marvel at my brilliance.) Wells never glosses over the pain and the after effects of terrible things; she treats these horrors with the respect they deserve unlike many other writers who linger over sexual assault and other violations to both eroticize the acts and use them to shock the reader.

Another great aspect of the series is the casual queerness of the characters. What I mean by a casual queerness is that the world itself is queer, so sexuality is a non-issue most of the time and since most of the characters are bisexual there is no single queer character for the whole of a complex identity to be pinned upon. As mentioned above, the Raksura are polyamorous, and though Moon’s main relationship is with the queen, Jade, he also has a strong and loving relationship with the male mentor-turned-warrior Chime. Chime is explicitly described as Moon’s favorite multiple times in the books. None of this is a main focus of the books but it is wonderful to see a world where queer sexuality is so accepted that it need not necessitate any conversation or explanation. Though it is thankfully becoming more common, it is still thrilling to see a world where queerness doesn’t exist as a way to isolate a character or to give them a tortured past. While many of Wells’s characters do have dark pasts, none of these are the result of their sexuality.

The series as a whole deserves all the accolades it has received and more, and The Harbors of the Sun acts as a lovely and fitting final book in the series. The adventure is thrilling and fast paced, moving you along at a steady pace that will make you rage at any real life interruptions. As always with Wells, the worldbuilding is top-notch and interesting, featuring unique species and fascinating flora and fauna that feel both fantastic and also oddly realistic. The interpersonal relationships between characters and the intrigue between both different species and political factions will keep you wondering until the very end. It’s always hard when a beloved series ends, but The Harbors of the Sun brings the Books of the Raksura to a satisfying end, one that leaves most characters in very different places emotionally than they were at their introduction. The world that Wells built still feels open and alive; so that this is more of a gentle tapering off than a firm end. Moon will certainly have many more adventures, even if we never get to see them.

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New Books Friday

(If you've been following my book rec and new book listing posts for a while, you may have noticed this already, but while most book lists emphasize books by popular straight white men, this one emphasizes everybody else. I include books by straight white men, but in about the same percentage that other book lists include everybody else. I also try to highlight books that are less well known.)

(I only link to one retail outlet in the book's listing, but most books are available at multiple outlets, like Kobo, iBooks, international Amazons, Barnes & Noble, etc. The short stories are usually on free online magazines.)


* Short story A Town on the Blighted Sea by A.M. Dellamonica


* A Blade So Black by LL McKinney
The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she's trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew. Life in real-world Atlanta isn't always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high-maintenance best friend, and a slipping GPA. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice's handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she’s ever gone before. And she'll need to use everything she's learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head . . . literally.


* Medusa's Touch by Emily Byrne
Medusa Pilot Captain TiCara X273, ex-street kid and former bondslave, thought she wanted nothing more than to be captain of her own starship. Or, at least, that was all that she thought she wanted until Sherin Khan came back into her life. A bar singer turned corporate rep, Sherin is now working for Ser Trin Vahn, one of TiCara's best clients and head of Vahn Corp. Once they are thrown together on TiCara's ship, TiCara and Sherin can no longer deny their simmering attraction to each other. A simple mission to transport the ailing Vahn to the legendary asteroid, Electra 12, for medical treatments turns dark and dangerous as betrayal leads to betrayal. TiCara's greatest enemy is pursuing them, there's a traitor on her crew and Sherin has a secret that can tear them apart. Can they learn to trust each other before it's too late?


* Short Story

* The Fall of Io by Wesley Chu
When Ella Patel's mind was invaded by the Quasing alien, Io, she was dragged into the raging Prophus versus Genjix war. Despite her reservations, and Io's incompetence, the Prophus were determined to train her as an agent. It didn't go well. Expelled after just two years, Ella happily returned to con artistry, and bank robberies. But the Quasing war isn't done with them yet. The Genjix's plan to contact their homeworld has reached a critical stage, threatening all life on Earth. To complete the project they need Io's knowledge - and he's in Ella's head - so now they're both being hunted, again.


* Short Story: A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde


* Novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djeli Clark
Cairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities — handling a possessed tram car.
Soon, however, Agent Hamed Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef are exposed to a new side of Cairo stirring with suffragettes, secret societies, and sentient automatons in a race against time to protect the city from an encroaching danger that crosses the line between the magical and the mundane.


* Short story Raney's Hounds by Jessica Reisman

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First Post of the New Year

Time to get back to work, though actually I got more done while I was supposed to be resting than I have in a while. Yesterday I finished a short story I've been struggling with for a while, so that was a huge relief.

I need to get moving on the book again and get some more done for the Patreon.

New Doctor Who tonight!

Oh, and tor.com reprinted this essay, which I'm not sure I ever linked here:

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/01/life-lessons-from-a-murderbot/
Life Lessons From a Murderbot by Anya Johanna DeNiro

I was tearing up at the end of All Systems Red, and I wasn’t sure why. Yes, it was sad that Murderbot was leaving its friends and colleagues, and a promised life of safety, behind. But there was something more, something to do with the entire arc of Murderbot’s journey from a SecUnit—seen more or less as a lethal appliance—to a trusted and capable member of a team of humans.

For me as a trans woman, All Systems Red’s concoction of heartbreak and ever-present anxiety felt achingly familiar to me (even as Murderbot’s narration and dry delivery cracked me up more often than not), as I looked back at various pressure points in my own transition. The novella has a lot to say about building a personal identity on the fly.

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