Galactic Suburbia 134
In which we throw our remit out the window to talk about a year’s worth of non-SFF!
What’s New on the Internet
This year, the Tiptree Motherboard established the Tiptree Fellowship Program to seek out and support creators who are striving to complete new works and make their voices heard. By adding Fellows each year, this program will create a network of creators who can build connections, support each other, and find opportunities for collaboration.
First Tiptree Fellows: Walidah Imarisha and Elizabeth LaPensée.
You can donate to encourage these and other new creators – donate through PayPal — or you can mail a check to 680 66th Street, Oakland, CA 94609.
Kate Elliott on Fangirl Happy Hour
What Non-SFFH Culture Have we Consumed over the YEAR?
TV:
Alisa: The West Wing rewatch, Transparent S1 and 2, Billy and Billie S1, The Good Wife
Tansy: Leverage, Glee, Grace & Frankie, Please Like Me Season 3, Master of None
Alex: Spooks rewatch; Veronica Mars
Movies:
Alisa: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (non-spoilery discussion mostly of seating, context and spoiler-avoiding)
Tansy: Musketeers! Footloose, A League of Their Own
Alex: Suffragette; Sound City
Podcasts:
Alisa: Self publishing webinars (Mark Dawson, Nick Stephenson); Undisclosed, The SweetGeorgia Show
Tansy: The Tuesday Club
Alex: Radio Lab; new ones: Gastropod and Chat 10, Looks 3; Waleed Aly on Osher Günsberg Podcast
Comics:
Tansy: Check, Please; Dumbing of Age
Books:
Tansy: A Few Right-Thinking Men, Sulari Gentill; The Suffragette Scandal, Courtney Milan; Castles Ever After: When A Scot Ties the Knot, by Tessa Dare
Alex: Andy Goldsworthy, Enclosure; Roger Crowley, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire; Jan Morris, The World: Life and Travel 1950-2000
Skype number: 03 90164171 (within Australia) +613 90164171 (from overseas)
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
The Devil You Know
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
In this novella, KJ Parker has taken the idea of Faust and puts his own spin on it. In most versions of that story, Faust makes a deal with the devil – in the person of Mephistopheles – whereby Faust gets all of his desires seen to and the devil gets his soul after some specified period of time. Classically, Faust panics at the end of the deal; of course the irony is that all Faust has to do to get out of the deal is to ask God for forgiveness and he’d be fine.
But this isn’t a review of Faust.
Saloninus is the greatest philosopher-scientist of his age, and possibly of all time. This is a secondary world, but Parker amuses himself by attributing numerous real-world achievements to Saloninus, I guess as a way of stressing how awesome Saloninus is. He makes a deal with… well, the being is never clearly identified as a demon, but that’s clearly the idea. Saloninus gets youth and twenty years of the demon being at his beck and call; he gives up his soul in return. Right from the start the demon is suspicious – why would such a man want to sell his soul for a mere twenty years? – and that’s what drives his(?) narrative throughout. Saloninus’ deal isn’t entirely clear.
One thing that got a bit annoying was the frequent switch in perspective, between the demon and the philosopher-scientist. In the version I read, an ARC to be sure, there wasn’t an easy way to tell the difference between narrators until, sometimes, a paragraph or more into the new section. Of course I got there, but there was more work involved than was necessary.
Overall, it was a fairly fun take on the idea of selling your soul.
SPOILER
The one real reservation I have is that the ending really didn’t work for me. I just wasn’t convinced by Saloninus’ motivation at all.
Forest of Memory
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
Mary Robinette Kowal takes the idea of memory and its fallibility as her central theme in this novella, and pairs it with the ever-fascinating ideas of narrative, and unreliable narrators, and their motivations.
Kowal’s narrator lives in a world of permanent connection, through her intelligent system, and a world of permanent life-casting – ideas that have a strong hold on the world of science fiction writing at the moment. I was strongly reminded of Ted Chiang’s awesome “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.” That story is a much more rigorous exploration of the same general themes, not least because it is much longer and because it pairs those themes with ideas connecting language and meaning and memory. The two work really nicely together.
Anyway, Katya is telling a story to persons unknown who have asked for the story of three days when she was offline. (The page before the story opens has this dedication: “For Jay Lake and Ken Scholes / Who asked me to tell them a story” – which is pretty amusing in context.) She is a dealer in Authenticities, meaning old stuff with wabi-sabi (a Japanese term, she explains, of something that witnesses and records the graceful decay of life), as well as Captures on the side – that is, she sells the record of her personal experiences. The difficulty she has, of course, is that for the three days she was offline she will need to rely on her own memories, rather than asking for a replay from her i-sys. She is super aware of the possibilities here of her own unreliability, reflecting on them and looping back on herself as she considers whether or not to trust herself. It’s a wonderfully constructed piece of worry.
There’s not a whole lot of action in the story, really, and it raises enormous questions about the world in which it’s set and the reasons for why someone wants Katya’s story. I rather hope that Kowal might consider writing more stories, or a novel, set in this world and further exploring the issues raised.
The Absconded Ambassador
This novella was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
I haven’t read the first Genrenauts story, so there was a bit of a surprise in the backstory of one of the characters, but nothing game changing. Other than that, it’s a straightforward idea – especially if you’ve read the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next books, as I have (well most of them. They lost their appeal after about the fifth book): sometimes there are breaches in what’s happening in stories, or genres more broadly, and they need to be fixed before the ripples affect Earth Prime.
This story (and I think the first one too) are largely told from the point of view of a new officer – of course; it makes the storytelling so much easier. This time there’s a problem in the science fiction area, so off the crew go in the Firefly-esque mode to a Deep Space Nine-esque station, to figure out what’s going on.
I’m really happy with the theory here.
However, I wasn’t thrilled with the execution. I thought that the story forgot its genrenaut aspect too often and strayed into straight Science Fiction Action without commentary. There was some excellent commentary on the idea of the Action Hero and what that archetype is allowed to do, but that wasn’t nearly as dominant or as thoughtful as I had hoped. Additionally, it was completely unclear to me whether what was going on in the plot of the in-story story (like the play within the play) was actually a breach, and therefore a problem. This is queried once in the story itself, and I wondered whether this is an ongoing teasing thread throughout the series (there’s at least one story to come), but if that’s the case then it’s neither been set up strongly enough to be intriguing nor set up subtly enough to pack a real surprise at the eventual reveal.
For me, then, this is heavier on the promise than on the delivery.
Cibola Burn
It’s weird. I did my mammoth James SA Corey re-read specifically in order to read this and then… it took me a while to really get into it. Partly, I think that’s because it was jarring to go from the familiar to the not but with some familiarity; it kind of threw me. And then there’s the fact that most of this book is set on, or orbiting above, a planet. I mean, there’s been bits set on Earth before, and quite a lot within the inhabited asteroids, but – a planet? as the main setting for an Expanse novel? That’s just weird.
But, eventually I got there. And of course I’m glad I did because this, really, is the conclusion to the arc that started with Leviathan Wakes (… although I’ve just bought the fifth novel and there’s a sixth due next year, so I don’t really know what’s going to happen there).
As always, there are multiple narrators. The prologue starts with Bobbie Draper, which is mean because it meant she wouldn’t feature and I really like Bobbie. Anyway. The first chapter is Basia, and it took me a little while to recognise the name (and a rather obvious hint, actually): but this is Miller’s acquaintance from Eros, the one whose little boy was kidnapped at the same time as Mai. He’s been part of the first wave of people to head out through one of the gates that’s now opened to the galaxy; basically, they’re squatters. Which is mostly fine, since their planet has a nice store of lithium for digging up and then selling – but because of that lithium, there’s a corporate ship coming with offical Earth papers that say the planet is theirs for the mining. Of course, why should an Earth piece of paper make a difference? And so Basia gets caught up with the wrong people (saboteurs) for the right reasons (family and freedom). He has many difficult decisions to make over the course of the novel.
The second narrator is Elvi, a scientist who is coming to the new planet (whose name depends on which side you’re on) with the corporate ship because heck, wouldn’t you? Chance to check out (what should be) a pristine new environment? Of course things go wrong (see previous comment on Basia’s friends), but she does at least get to do some science. I wasn’t always happy with Elvi’s narrative; I’m particularly conflicted about the romantic aspects, because while I think I understand it, it did feel a bit like “oh a lady must feel romance” and that makes me sad. She does get to be a kickass scientist though, which I guess is a consolation.
Third is Havelock, and I am so embarrassed by how long it took me to figure out who this was. It wasn’t until there were really obvious comments about being an Earther and being part of Belter security that I realised: this was Miller’s partner, back in the day. The one he warned off when things were getting difficult for Earthers. So we have a marvellous set of call-backs to the first novel, here. I mostly liked Havelock, although his tendency to just follow and mirror what his leaders are doing got pretty old. I enjoyed the perspective he allowed, though – it did add a nice rounding to the story.
And fourthly, of course, what would an Expanse novel be without James Holden? Oh Jim. Seriously. This time, he’s involved precisely because of who he is: one of the most notorious men in the solar system, renowned for a disturbing sense of decency and fierce love of truth. Who better to negotiate between Belter squatters and an Earther corporation? BAHAHA.
Also, of course, Miller is still around and being annoying in Holden’s head. In fact, the artefact gets its own occasional appearance in the narration of the story…
Not quite as enjoyable as the previous novels, but still a really solid SF story… and the epilogue makes me rather excited for the fifth.
You can get Cibola Burn from Fishpond.
Luna: New Moon
This book was provided by the publisher at no cost.
Um. Wow.
Over on Goodreads, Jonathan Strahan describes it “basically The Moon is a Very, Very Harsh Mistress” which… yes. (Also makes me curious to back it up with the Heinlein….)
The short version: this is magnificent, occasionally vicious lunar science fiction, with a fascinating society, varied and variable characters, and unexpected plot twists. HIGHLY recommended. I want to read more like this.
Galactic Suburbia 133
In which Alisa has feelings about Lovecraft’s image being associated with (and from next year, removed from) the World Fantasy Award.
WHAT’S NEW ON THE INTERNET
World Fantasy Awards announced
CULTURE CONSUMED
ALEX: Alex: re-reading the James SA Corey series, The Expanse, books 1-3, so I could read the fourth one, Cibola Burn; Eff Yeah Film and Feminism podcast; Manners and Mutiny, Gail Carriger.
ALISA: PhD research and experiments.
TANSY: Tremontaine Parts 1-3 by Ellen Kushner & others, The Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, I, Zombie, Supergirl, Jessica Jones
Skype number: 03 90164171 (within Australia) +613 90164171 (from overseas)
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Lustlocked
This story was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
An amusing, light and fluffy story.
It’s the second story to be set in the restaurant Sin du Jour, and I’ve not read the first; that didn’t seem to be too much of a hindrance. I think I missed a little bit of the tension between characters (and initially I thought the two main characters were lovers, not housemates), but the cast is reintroduced well enough that I had no trouble following the various interactions.
The basic premise is that there’s going to be a goblin wedding – well, the crown prince of goblin-dom is marrying a human – and this version of goblins is that they are the bright and beautiful… in fact most of them are Hollywood celebrities. You already know who the Goblin King is (yes, really, Wallace went There); I’m not entirely sure who the queen is meant to be: she’s described as the most famous supermodel, and my mind went to Elle Macpherson, but maybe that’s just because I’m Australian? Perhaps it could be Naomi Campbell? (ETA: Thoraiya tells me a certain Goblin King is married to supermodel Iman. Oops.) Anyway, such beautiful creatures naturally require an extravagant wedding aaaaaand then things go bad. Some of the story is around preparing for the wedding (goblins eat jewels, of course) and some of it is dealing with, um, rampaging lusty reptiles. So half almost cosy culinary fantasy, half magic/mayhem fantasy.
Don’t read this for deep philosophical reflections. Do read this for a bit of banter, a bit of snark about celebrity, and people getting themselves out of sticky situations in amusing ways. It comes out from Tor.com in January.
Ballad of Black Tom
This novella was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
I may not have the context with which to really comment on this story – I have a bit of knowledge of America in the 1920s but not all that much; my understanding of race relations in America is slightly better than superficial but not exactly deep. Also I have next to no knowledge of HP Lovecraft’s work
With all of that said, I really enjoyed this story, so as someone without masses of history about the period of the story that’s a pretty good recommendation.
The story is split in two, with two different narrators – which actually really surprised me, so that’s kind of a spoiler I guess. The first half is told by Tommy Tester, a young black man who makes a living by hustling, basically. He wears a musician disguise to be both seen and unseen; he gets jobs that need that sort of look. One day he encounters a wealthy white man, Robert Suydam, and things… get weird.
The second half of the story is from the perspective of a white policeman, Malone, whom Tommy encounters early on and then later. He’s not entirely a stranger to unnatural occurrences, and gets more involved in the weird stuff Tommy and Suydam conjure up than he would perhaps like.
The plot isn’t especially intricate but it’s certainly compelling enough to keep me turning the pages. On top of that is what (with all the caveats above about my knowledge of the period) I found to be a very interesting commentary on race relations. The (white) police treatment of black people in Harlem wasn’t a surprise, dealt with bluntly but with compassion I thought; Suydam’s manipulation of race resentment struck me as all too plausible (hello living in Australia in 2015). I don’t know whether the attempt to make Malone sympathetic to the plight of non-white immigrants was an attempt at not making all whites evil, or whether it reflects reality; possibly it’s a case of both being feasible? Makes the story that much more compelling, anyway.
Lastly: Ma Att? Brilliant.
Certainly recommended.Th
Manners and Mutiny
This book was provided to me by the publisher at no cost.
Firstly? I do not love this cover. It’s far too old to be Sophronia, which I don’t remember being a problem with the other covers. The crossbow is appropriate, at least. I am also not wild about the yellow.
Fortunately I do not tend to judge books by covers; at least, not books in a series I have been enjoying and whose author I tend to trust.
Randomly Yours, Alex 