Galactic Suburbia #12
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In which we talk about publishers behaving badly, authors self-publishing, the future of reading and the price of a short story. Also we talk about books. Shocking, isn’t it?
News
Night Shade apologises for any problems they’ve caused any of their authors.
SFWA puts Night Shade Books on probation as a qualified SFWA market for a period of one year, effective immediately.
Aqueduct publish their 50th book in 6 years of publishing.
Shirley Jackson awards winners.
Don’t forget to vote in the Hugos (by July 31) and nominate for the Ditmars (um… today, July 23)
What have we been reading/listening to?
Alex: The Walled Orchard, Tom Holt (abandoned); Soulless, Gail Carriger; Secret Feminist Cabal, Helen Merrick; Pattern Recognition, William Gibson.
Listening to: Coode St podcast; AstronomyCast; SGCast (definitely abandoned); Bad Film Diaries.
Tansy: Moonshine, Alaya Johnson. Palimpsest, Catherynne Valente on the iPad! Kraken by China Mieville (abandoned).
Listening to: the Ood Cast. Bad Film Diaries
Alisa: Power and Majesty
Pet Subject: self publishing in the changing face of the publishing industry
The Omikuji Cyberfunded Art Project
Apple opens iBookstore to self-publishers
We’re looking to do another feedback episode soon, so get your Feedback, etc: galacticsuburbia@gmail.com
Galactic Suburbia #11
*yes, I’ve resumed posting! I could go back and post the other ten sets of show-notes, but that seems ridiculous… Suffice to say, you can subscribe to Galactic Suburbia through iTunes, or download it from our lovely website.
In which the paradigm keeps shifting, Jasper Fforde writes dystopia, Alisa still hates pirate stories, George Lucus ruined it for the rest of us, and we wonder whether there are still readers who think you shouldn’t have SF with kissing in it.
News
Locus Award Winners
Liz Williams selling her own short fiction
Open calls for subs for Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror by Paula Guran
Amazing, thoughtful article about one woman’s history as a gamer and the way cyberspace still drops the ball in catering to its female audience
What have we been reading/listening to?
Alisa: Bleed, The Company Articles of Edward Teach, Breaking Dawn
Listening to Clarkesworld Podcast
Alex: Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde; Secret Feminist Cabal, Helen Merrick
Tansy: The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan; Moonshine by Alaya Dawn Johnson; listening to Boxcutters
Pet Subject: The Romantic Side of Science Fiction
Are there still readers who think SF and romance shouldn’t mix? [http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2010/05/why-sf-fandom-is-full-of-romance-haterz.html]
Is the lack of romance the reason that fantasy & urban fantasy are leaving science fiction in the dust commercially? What are the best and worst examples of SF colliding with a love story?
Does having a love interest make it count as a romance? Where’s the line?
Does having a plot, even just a subplot, related to characters and feelings make it not science fiction?
Alex provides this vintage quote from a letter written in 1938, from The Secret Feminist Cabal:
“…females have been dragged into the narratives and as a result the stories have become those of love which have no place in science-fiction… I believe, and I think many others are with me, that sentimentality and sex should be disregarded in scientific stories.”
Feedback, etc: galacticsuburbia@gmail.com
[the management would like to note that Alisa gave up sugar this week and thus anything she says should be considered with that in mind]
Librivox
If you have a commute, or otherwise do things that don’t require a lot of brain power and you’d rather be reading, and you have a music device, you should totally get hooked up with Librivox. Books that are our of copyright get read by volunteers and are available to download for free! How cool is that?
So far, I’ve listened to two H. Rider Haggard stories (written in the 1890s, Brits travelling in Deepest Darkest Africa and having adventures; be warned about the casual racism) – both well done; and HG Wells’ The Invisible Man, which was totally not what I expected: much more social drama, much less SF, but enthralling nonetheless. I downloaded Wells’ Time Machine too, but… well, it’s done by volunteers. And I simply could not, could not listen to the reader’s voice another minute. Drove me batty. *sigh* Still to go, I have more H. Rider Haggard (Allan Quartermain), I have The Island of Dr Moreau, and I have The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I’ve never read! So hopefully the readers of those will be approachable. (I must say that the reader of The Invisible Man is utterly swoon-worthy… I recommend listening to anything he’s read!)
The Fisher King
So I’ve been listening to some BBC podcasts recently – the “In Our Time” series. I really enjoy them – the interplay between the three interlocutors, the broad range of topics they cover within the topic itself: it’s all glorious. What I do often find drives me nuts, though, is Melvyn Bragge himself. He so often seems to think he knows everything about the topic after his preliminary reading – I’m happy to admit that he probably spends a number of hours in doing so, but still, he’s talking to people who have spent large amount of their professional lives, at least, thinking about the stuff! He particularly annoyed me in this episode, but I’ll get to that.
I had a most exciting moment in listening to this episode, which has never happened before: I knew one of the people! Well, ‘knew’ in the loosest possible sense; I’ve read most of one of his books, when I was researching for an essay on Robin Hood; and I heard him speak once on the figure of Merlin – Stephen Knight. An Aussie, who teaches in Wales on Arthur-y type things, among other topics. Anyway, it was a very cool moment for me.
So, the episode itself: focussing on the Fisher King, which I think is very cool in and of itself, that you can talk for 40-odd minutes on a fairly obscure literary figure/convention. Awesome. They looked at when the Fisher King first appears – in connection with Arthurian stuff; what his figure represents, pagan and Christian; and what he came to mean, in the 19th and 20th centuries (and they did indeed mention, if only briefly, the movie – which I was waiting for!), in Eliot (I might have to re-read The Waste Land… scary thought) and others.
All up, it was a great deal of fun to read, as I pounded along the path….
You can even, as they say in the business, listen again!
Podcast
You know how some people can listen to their recorded voice, and they have no problem with it?
Well, that’s not me.
Nonetheless, I bring you My First Podcast. The first part is Cassiphone interviewing Marianne, which is interesting; the second part is Cassiphone and I having a yarn about Troy, which I have previously raved about here. I have listened to, oh, about 10 seconds of it. I am sniffling a lot – had a nasty cold – and I think I sound dreadful. If you think I sound like I do in real life, don’t bother telling me! Because I don’t want to know that. Still, it is very exciting to have this podcast up – a first for ASif!, and quite possibly going to become a semi-regular feature. And if GJ gets Skype too, the world had better start trembling!
Hell, and the history thereof
As I cook an enormous lasagne to feed a 5 year old and 4 year old tonight (and their parents), I’m catching up on my “In our Time” podcasts. At the moment it’s “The history of hell,” which is interesting for a whole load of reasons. But something that just struck me: Bosch and Luther were contemporaries! Fascinating.
Now they’re talking about the fact that in many early traditions, hell was freezing, rather than being, with the speculation that this is some sort of folk memory of the change, 10,000 years ago, from the last Ice Age. Apparently – and I don’t know who thinks this – there is an idea that the Ice Age changed over just 10 years or so, such that people would experience it very obviously.
And now they’re talking about Heart of Darkness The Waste Land. The idea of the journey down the Congo, to the supervisor at the inner station, who might be described as a modern Tiresias. Now that is a really, really interesting idea.
BBC radio shows
I’ve been listening to “In our Time” today: my house has been invaded by musos, taping a demo of some new songs written by Esther. So I’m banished to the bedroom, with my puter and a couple of books.
So I’ve listened to the episode on the Diet of Worms, on the EncyclopeÌdie, and at the moment to Poincare and his conjecture… which I admit I’m not listening to very carefully, so I’m actually not really sure what the conjecture is. Nevertheless, I do enjoy these episodes, despite the fact that often I think Melvyn is a but of a knob, and seems to try and trip his guests up. Sometimes I guess his seeming-abrasiveness is to get the entire thing done in 40 minutes, which is always an effort.
Delano R Franklin
…is one of the cleverer names I’ve heard recently in a story. This is from “Paradox and Greenblatt,” written by Kevin J Anderson, from EscapePod (episode 74). This was a very, very clever story – well worth streaming or podcasting!
Marlowe
Am listening to the BBC4 programme on Christopher Marlowe at the moment. I had no idea that he was born in the same year as Shakespeare. Interesting discussion on how they influenced each other – apparently Shakespeare actually quotes Marlowe somewhere, which is very cool. And Marlowe is the one who first really exemplifies blank verse and long soliloquies, taken up by Shakespeare. Very cool. I always did love Faustus.
Melvyn Bragge
I’ve been listening to a lot of BBC Radio’s “In our time” today. It’s good, but Bragge really is quite arrogant and butts in a lot; I guess he needs to do this to some extent, to keep the speakers in order because it’s radio, but still – he wants to be an expert on everything and keep on proving himself to be the best. Boring.
Randomly Yours, Alex 