Booklists, various. And one bell ringing . . . list.

 

First things first:  SUNSHINE is on NPR's list of candidates for best 100 SF&F books.*  You get to vote for ten:  please go vote.  :  http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles?sc=fb&cc=fp  You can do anything you like with your other nine votes. . . .

            It's an interesting list, and I'm pleased that it's as varied as it is—Elizabeth Moon is on it, and Vonda McIntyre, and Patricia McKillip;  and LOTR and THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING** . . . and a lot more than five other titles I will need to vote for, and you only get ten votes.  There are also several I think of as underappreciated, like BRIDGE OF BIRDS and REPLAY and SWORDSPOINT and THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION*** and four by Octavia Butler†.  What's good about a list like this is that people, especially those only glancingly acquainted with SF&F, will read it and go oh, hey, well, maybe I'll read that one then.  Even I'm doing that and I do read SF&F.††

            I almost never look at 'best' lists, first because I'm never on them and second because they piss me off—these two attributes are related, yes, but the former is not the whole story about the latter.  However I am on this one, and so I get to Posit A Few Things.  Like . . . eight books by Robert Heinlein?  Eight?  I want to say 'are you frelling joking' but clearly it's too late for that.  Eight titles in the running for the best SF&F ever written are by that . . . nmmmrmph . . . misogynist creep?  ARRRRRGH.  I don't think so, myself.  And yes, I agree, he's an important figure on the SF&F landscape, he can tell a heck of a page-turner†††, and siiiiiigh some representation on a best-of list is probably necessary.  But EIGHT titles?  EIGHT?‡  When there are so many that aren't on it at all?  Like . . . Peter Dickinson.  TULKU?  BLUE HAWK?  CHANGES?  EMMA TUPPER?  ROPEMAKER?  MERLIN DREAMS?  FLIGHT OF DRAGONS?  THE GREEN GENE?‡‡ To name—ahem—eight.  But at this point I pause and look through the list again.  No Diana Wynne Jones either.  Hmm.  Okay, they must be doing that spurious-division thing again:  this is the list for adults.‡‡‡  Spare me.§

          And, I guess, stay tuned for the kiddie/YA list.  At least that means more books.

 * * *

Meanwhile, I have now spent way too much time casting fretfully up and down that list and I promised you an update on the auction.  What is holding up progress is that while I know which of my books are supposed to be in print . . . which of them are readily available and in what editions is a ratbag.  In fact, several ratbags.  I have emails in to various publishing people about this . . . and only some of them have answered.  Meanwhile, my stress level, never exactly slack and floppy, but which was coping with, for example, the prospect of 3000 doodles§§, has skyrocketed out into the blergosphere with the advent of this book-availability stuff I have no control over.  So we're going to present you with a compromise:  'editions may vary'.  And if anything is particularly popular we'll have to halt production occasionally and check supply.  I'm sorry:  thinking ahead is not my strong point, and originally this was just going to be an auction of out of print stuff that is already in Third House's attic.

            Several of you have suggested that there simply has to be a bats-in-the-belfry doodle.  I can do this but I'm not sure I can get it down even to a $15 doodle.  I'm still working on it.  We may have to have a special $20 doodle category . . . but maybe I can balance it by offering the map of Damar for $5, as someone else suggested . . . snork.

 * * *

And to finish, a bit of pure sloppy unmitigated un-caveated self-aggrandising joy.  Geek Mom posted this, and I've been grinning all day.  http://www.campanophile.com/view.aspx?125427 

* * * 

* Thank you, forum member Jack D_Arcy and mod gryphon. 

** Speaking of misogyny, which I'm about to.  There's so much that is gorgeous and first-rate and essential and unbetterable in ONCE AND FUTURE, but I'll never forgive him his Guinevere. 

            And please don't start talking to me about context and era and allowing for the society they lived in blah blah blah blah.  Anthony Trollope could write intelligent, capable, human women, why couldn't Charles Dickens?  I love Dickens, I've read everything he ever wrote (nearly), but his women are all smarmy good girls or mad and depraved.  On the whole I'll take the mad and depraved but I'd like a third choice.  Even allowing for era, there are lines.  TH White was over them.  And yes I also know he was a miserable old git who didn't like much of anyone, least of all himself.   What's on the page is still on the page. 

*** And John Varley, only I don't know STEEL BEACH.  Oops. 

† And . . . LUD-IN-THE-MIST?  What?  I think obscurity suits that one just fine. 

†† And write it.  Ahem.  But there's so much of it out there now that you can't help but be overwhelmed and to ensnare more readers there need to be lists like this to give them a path through the thickets.  Mwa hahahahaha.  In a good way. 

††† And in high school I fell for STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND hook, line and the-way-women-get-to-be-important-is-by-having-sex-with-guys sinker.  Oh yes and old guys get to have sex with beautiful young nubile women.  Because that's cool.  And happy, free sex solves all your problems.^  I was young for my age, and this was the sixties.  The Vietnam War and hippies. 

            Pollyanna prevents me from getting to grips with some of the other head-exploding misogyny on this list.  Which for the sake of the integrity of my skull is just as well.  

^ It may very well.  But humans aren't built for it.  Except in science fiction. 

‡I am not counting up number of SF titles against number of fantasy, nor number of women writers against number of men.  I don't want to know.  But I kept seeing Robert Heinlein's name, again and again and again.  And . . . even without counting, I can't help registering that it's an overwhelming male list.  Siiiiiiigh.  We get Robert E Howard, but not CL Moore or Leigh Brackett, for one tiny they're-all-safely-dead example.  And . . . is James Tiptree really not on the list?  If there's a way to make the authors go alphabetical I haven't found it.  Which is one of the reasons I've spent way too much time hunting. 

‡‡ Which is one of the great criminally neglected novels out there, by Peter Dickinson or anyone else.  It is outrageous, and outrageously funny.  Have you read it?  Good luck finding a copy.  Although Abebooks usually has everything, if you keep clicking. 

‡‡‡ No Harry Potter.  And CS Lewis' space trilogy, but not Narnia. 

§ http://therumpus.net/2011/08/ya-and-your-mom/

            And while I'm being provocative, not to say cantankerous, is Margaret Atwood still saying loudly that she doesn't write SF?  I think we should say fine, honey, and take her off the list.  To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I don't want anyone in my club who doesn't want to be there. 

            Silly woman.  Genre is hot.  

§§ Which I may complete by Christmas.  Because you're all buying them for Christmas presents, right?  "Oh, thank you.  Er.  It's—what is it?"

            . . . But if they were all $15 doodles, it wouldn't be 3000, it would only be . . . the number of the beast.  This seems to me inordinately funny.  Okay, it's late at night, the ME is still sticking up my brain cells, I should go to bed. . . . hee hee hee hee hee. . . .