Menial: Skilled Labor in SF
Reviewing an anthology is always a bit more difficult than reviewing a novel. So is rating it. Does one poor story deserve to bring down the entire anthology? Should I mention every single story?
I gave this anthology a 5-star rating on Goodreads. I did not do this because every single story blew me away; they didn’t, although I don’t remember any story that I loathed, which is impressive in its own right. Partly I was predisposed to being impressed by the anthology because of the theme: the menial. That is, no heirs-misplaced-at-birth, no admirals or planetary governors or princesses starring here; instead, it’s the miners, the sewerage workers, the grunts who feature. Not to say that the stories don’t feature action or adventure – they do – but largely it’s action that happens in the course of everyday work, and often because of accidents: the sorts of things that you’d really rather didn’t happen. The anthology points out the dignity in the menial tasks, as well as acknowledging the sheer back-breaking work that’s likely to still be necessary in the future; it points out the importance of the menial while remembering the danger. And even though the menial workers shine in the stories, it’s clear that for most of them, this isn’t going to lead to a huge change in fortunes. It’s part of a day’s work, or it’s not but it’s not enough to propel them out of drudgery – or indeed it’s something that leads to them getting fired and the consequent uncertainty of unemployment.
This anthology shows that good SF can be escapist in letting the reader escape from their own immediate situation, but can simultaneously speak to the reader who is unlikely to be a spaceship pilot or lead an army, but may well have a dead-end job that they hate. It can provide ways to imagine a different world but also reassure and comfort that even people in crappy jobs can actually have interesting lives, and do interesting things – something much SF ignores.
This anthology imagines a range of possible futures. They’re mostly fairly far future, and involve space travel of some sort; some have humanity spread far and wide, others are a bit more restricted. Because of its focus on the working class, there is less emphasis on the political or military than one often finds in SF, because really, when you’re scraping to get food on the table who has time to worry about the expansion of the empire? Many of these stories are united in their focus on the nitty-gritty details, those details that make up the everyday. Some of them are very familiar, some are familiar but in foreign contexts, whilst others are utterly alien. And the best stories make this work in clever and occasionally utterly bemusing ways.
I was initially dubious about the possibility of making an entire anthology based on the concept of skilled labour; not because I thought the concept was boring but because I wasn’t sure how there could be enough variety within that to keep having different stories. This is because I am not an author. There is, of course, infinite variety in the stories you can tell from the menial perspective – because there’s an infinite variety of stories to tell about humanity.
You can get Menial from Fishpond.
On Ragnarok
I have been wanting to read Byatt for a long time now and somehow have never got around to it. Shame on me. So when I saw this little book for sale for about $6 in a dinky little newsagent in a dinky little town – SNAP. MINE.
It’s part of the Canongate Myths series, which I had heard of and thought I had read a few… but if you click on that link (don’t do it, Tansy, it’s a rabbit hole!) you’ll see there’s HEAPS and most of them I hadn’t heard of! Although I was right, and it is the same series as The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood, swooooon – I love that book so much; it’s Penelope’s side of The Odyssey… thus the Greek version of Ursula le Guin’s Lavinia, I guess) and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight (about Hercules and Atlas, and also excellent). Thing with these books – those I’ve read – is that they’re retellings of myths. So when I saw that this was Ragnarok, the Norse myth of The End of Days, and that it involved WW2 – well, I assumed that the two were going to be mashed in a glorious Armageddon. That is, however, not what happened.
There are two parallel stories in this volume. One is a rough outline of Norse mythology from creation to the end of times, mostly following the antics of Loki, which is fair enough since he may have been around from the start and was largely responsible for the end. It’s a pretty straight retelling, as far as I can tell; Byatt has added in motivation and dialogue and the sorts of things that modern readers expect, but there’s no wild deviation into really exploring Loki or giving Loki and Baldur a steamy romance that explains the mistletoe episode. So while I enjoyed that, because they’re good stories and there were some details (like Loki’s parenting of the monsters) that had never clicked in my head before, it wasn’t really what I was expecting.
The second story is that of the thin child – as she is always referenced – as she is evacuated to the countryside during WW2, and is given a book of Norse mythology. It’s the thin child’s experiences of life during wartime, and of discovering mythology and literature – there’s a strong suggestion I think that this is heavily autobiographical. There’s certainly a sense that it is the thin child telling the Norse stories to the reader. This aspect was also quite enjoyable, although frustrating because it felt to me like it lacked depth. I think mostly I was disappointed that the connections between the war and Ragnarok were not made explicit. Byatt goes to the point of saying that the thin child’s father, a pilot away at war, has “red-gold hair” and is “like a god”… but makes no further connection to the idea that he, or the airforce, could be connected to Thor or some other aspect of mythology.
It’s definitely a good read, and I am definitely going to just down more Byatt. If you know nothing about Norse mythology this is a very good, and entertaining, place to start. If you’re looking for a Norse equivalent of The Penelopiad, this is not it.
Han Solo
What can I say, I’m one of those people who thinks that Solo is really the star of the Star Wars movies; I was very annoyed that eps1-3 didn’t make a reference to him, even something as small as ‘here’s this kid I’m teaching to be a smuggler…’.
Anyway, a friend was cleaning out her house of books and I became the recipient of a Rather Large Bag of Star Wars novels… and I have finally dipped my toe in. I started here partly because SOLO, and partly because of this article about the author, AC Crispin, having recently died. And I had no idea that AC = Ann.
So. Solo.
Look, this is not a novel that was ever going to win literary prizes. The prose is a bit clunky, some of the characters are a bit stock, and yes the overall plot is a bit hackneyed. BUT! But.
a) It’s SOLO. Who doesn’t want to know how the galaxy’s most loveable rogue got to where he is? Who doesn’t want to know why someone so rough on the outside actually has such a soft smooshy inside? (Much like a tauntaun…). Plus, how did he GET that tough exterior? How did he and Chewbacca find each other, and what about the Millennium Falcon? These are questions I really want an answer to. So, I’ll read the novels.
b) It expands the Star Wars universe. I think one reason why I really like the idea of the enormous number of tie-in novels is that they’re all set in the same universe, but they don’t concentrate on just one bit. The Zahn novels didn’t; this one novel takes the reader to a few different planets, and while most of them are (as far as I recall) referenced in the original movies, this book looks at them from a rather different perspective – and it still works. It’s a lot grubbier, mostly. Yes Solo is a smuggler in the movies, yes Tatooine is the planet-futherest-from-the-bright-centre-of-the-galaxy – but really you don’t see much of the seamier side of the planets, let alone of the empire as an Evil Empire. Contrariwise, Crispin sets a lot of her story in the criminal underground, or on a slave plantation. Some people are nice, some are downright rotters.
c) Gratuitous Star Wars references. Sure Solo’s miff-ed-ness at being called scruffy got a bit tired after a while, but still – funny.
d) It takes Star Wars stuff but it makes it different. There’s an elderly Wookee woman that Solo’s friends with, and there are clear parallels to Chewbacca (also with his non-human companion Muuurgh) – but it’s not identical. There’s a romantic interest and again, parallels to Leia but by no means identical, and indeed provides some rather thought-provoking points on why Solo reacts the way he does to Leia (abandonment issues). Links to the Hutts, being a pilot, etc – all of these essential elements are there, but Crispin does interesting enough things with them that it’s by no means ‘young Solo just imitates old Solo.’ And that’s cool.
Thus this novel was definitely light entertainment. It’s light because it doesn’t require an enormous investment of time or thought-process from the reader – although it does raise genuine issues and does not simply ignore them. It’s entertainment because there are pirates, and smugglers, and chases, and Han Solo.
Galactic Suburbia 90!
Listen to us via iTunes or over at Galactic Suburbia!
In which we present The Subgenre Report. Is the concept of subgenres meaningful to readers and writers, or just a marketing trick?
Which subgenres are OMG so hot right now, and which genre is doing subgenres better than spec fic?
In other news, Alisa hurls herself into crowdfunding with the baby clock ticking down to midnight…
Grimdark as a Young Man’s Genre? (do read the comments, seriously, that’s where all the crunchy discussion/challenge is)
The Rise and Fall of Grimpink
Culture Consumed:
Alisa: Continuum S1, crimeScene convention, plug for Kaleidoscope, Coode St Podcast ep 162 with Rachel Swirsky; Report from Planet Midnight, Nalo Hopkinson
Tansy: BBC Radio Neverwhere; Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, The Almighty Johnsons
Alex: Agents of SHIELD; Star Wars: The Paradise Snare, AC Crispin; Ragnarok, AS Byatt
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Crowd funding
1. Twelfth Planet Press is running a Pozible campaign to get a new anthology off the ground. Edited by Alisa Krasnostein (one of the voices of Galactic Suburbia; the other one, Tansy, is already writing her story…) and Julia Rios, this is a really awesome anthology: the idea is that (to quote them):
The main characters in Kaleidoscope stories will be part of the QUILTBAG, neuro-diverse, disabled, from non-Western cultures, people of color, or in some other way not the typical straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied characters we see all over the place.
Please consider contributing if you can – and either way, spread the word! I’m tardy in posting this, so there’s just 12 days to go (closes 31 October), and they’re not quite halfway yet. Halfway to what? $12000 will allow them to pay pro-rates AND publish the book AND do all the other rewards stuff. That’s not a lot for a whole lot of brilliant. If you need more convincing, they’ve already got three names to the anthology: Ken Liu (!!!), Sofia Samatar, and Jim C Hines. Magnificent.
2. A Kickstarter that I backed ages ago is now live! Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond (that link takes you to Fishpond) is an anthology that does just what it says; wrenches the future from overly white, American hands and puts it into more ethnically diverse ones. My copy came with a mixtape, and when George Clinton’s dulcet tones announced “ah-good evening” as the first track… well, I admit that I squealed a little with joy. Watch this space for a review!
Bogarde
Once upon a time, I was 16. One 16-year-old Saturday afternoon, I switched on the television to discover a black-and-white Dirk Bogarde being sentenced to death by He-Who-Would-Be Rumpole (Leo McKern). I was horrified and mesmerised. And then when Bogarde declaimed “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” … well, there was definitely Something In My Eye. Such that my mother had to ask what the problem was, and when I told her Dr Simon Sparrow was on a tumbrel, headingfor the guillotine… she just shook her head.
I am of an age to remember when Friday nights were a Great Night for movies. My dad stayed up super-late with me once, to watch Breaker Morant, and had to almost physically prevent me from ranting and raving about the injustice of it all, because who does high-horse morality better than a 15 year old? Anyway, the ABC went through a period of classic British films, whence my introduction to Carry On. And after Carry On came the Doctor films. And Dr Simon Sparrow just stole my heart. (Seriously! Look at those eyes!)
All of this is the long-way-around way of saying that a few years after all this, my mother bought me a biography of Bogarde. That was quite a long time ago now. I have an unfortunate habit of appreciating the books she buys me but not reading them for ages. In my defence this is a BIG book – like 700 pages big – and somehow 700 pages of biography is different from 700 pages of space opera. Because I finally, finally read it. Hooray! And it took me quite a long time (like over a week).
I vaguely remember Mum breaking it to me that he was gay; I had no idea that he went on to have such a successful career as an author, nor that his film career was quite as… fraught.
The bio had some excellent bits in it. I was fascinated by the discussion of film-making in Britain in the 50s and 60s (and a bit horrified); the idea of Judy Garland and other such bright lights going over to Bogarde’s place for Sunday lunch kinda blew my mind. But there are some problems here as well. Firstly, and most annoyingly, Coldstream makes quite a deal of the fact that in his memoirs, Tony Forwood often appears as entirely marginal, sometimes only as a manager vaguely hanging around. The reality is that they lived together for something like 50 years. Coldstream makes this part of Bogarde’s fear of being outed as gay (totally reasonable in the 50s when Britain still had its laws making homosexuality illegal), but also part of his rewriting of his personal history. My main beef with this, though, is that Coldstream doesn’t actually interrogate Bogarde and Forwood’s relationship himself. I don’t mean that I wanted to read an expose of their sex life; I mean that I was left wondering whether they actually were lovers, or had an entirely platonic relationship or… what. Coldstream fell into the same problem – not entirely ignoring Forwood, but not properly considering his significance – that he accused Bogarde of. Which means there’s this huge part of Bogarde’s life – was he gay? Was he asexual? – that is ignored. And if you’re writing a bio, that should (I feel) be either part of the discussion, or completely left out, and if the latter then that needs to be spelled out for the reader. Especially in Bogarde’s case where his drop-dead-beauty was part of his appeal as a film star, and where his sexuality has been cause for discussion for a very long time.
My other gripe with this book concerns two really weird bits. One: Coldstream sent off samples of Bogarde’s handwriting to a graphologist. That’s someone who analyses handwriting and tells you about your personality. Um, weird. Two: the biography ends with a totally bizarre story of the people who bought Bogarde and Forwood’s estate in France being superstitious about a possession of Bogarde’s bringing them bad luck. Also, um, weird.
If you’re interested in film history, this is awesome. I’ve left it with my mum and I think she’ll get more out of it because she’ll know more about the people being mentioned. If you’re interested in biography generally this actually is quite a good one – it’s perfectly readable and Bogarde really did have a fascinating life, serving in WW2 then acting in theatre and films – and oh the drama (heh) around that – then going on to writing and public appearances.
Galactic Suburbia 89
In which we recommend books to buy as presents, books we love, books we made, and basically BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS. You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
Alisa’s picks: 2012; Trucksong; A Trifle Dead; Rosaleen Love’s Twelve Planets collection; the entire Twelve Planets suite (get them while they look the same! especially Love & Romanpunk)
Alex’s picks: Temeraire by Naomi Novik; Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman; Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal; Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin; House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds
Tansy’s picks: Glitter and Mayhem; Chicks Unravel Time; The Wife in Space; The Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy; Creature Court trilogy (Power and Majesty)
Culture Consumed:
Alex: Reap the Wild Wind, Julie Czerneda; Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
Tansy: Flying Higher eds by Michael Damian Thomas & Shira Lipkin [download free from Smashwords], Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time 1-4, Supurbia by Grace Randolph, Elizabeth Sladen the Autobiography, The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta
Alisa: Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal
BLATANT PLUG: Songs For Europe, two short plays about Eurovision & war by John Richards of Splendid Chaps & Lee Zachariah of the Bazura Project on this week only as part of the Melbourne Fringe.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Reap the Wild Wind
I read this thanks to a recommendation from Helen Merrick, who I seem to recall being a massive Czerneda fan. I understand that this is a prequel series, written after the world in question becomes part of a wider galactic network. Not having read the later books, I can’t say how an already-fan would respond; but I imagine there are some awesome moments of filling-in-gaps. Because it is indeed a wonderful novel, and I do fully intend to go and find the rest of the trilogy, and probably the later series as well.
Told mostly from the adolescent (unChosen, in the parlance of her people) Aryl’s point of view, this is a story of a world that – as far as Aryl is concerned – is entirely static, as it should be. One of the characters comments on Aryl and her people living in an eternal ‘now’ – and although that’s not entirely fair, because their lives do revolve around the season of harvest, it does make sense because their knowledge of history and their expectations for the future are exceptionally limited. But this is not, overall, a bad thing: Aryl’s family and friends live full, rich and generally rewarding lives. Without interference – and of course you know there’s going to be interference – the Yena live.
Aryl lives on Cersi, a world that is home to three different sentient species. Aryl is of the Om’ray, human-types who live in Clans in disparate parts of the world and who rarely interact with each other except when one of the boys leaves on Passage, drawn by a woman who has become sexually mature (there’s some mental communication stuff which makes this basically make sense). The Oud and the Tikitik are not humaniform, and they are more technologically advanced than the Om’ray – they swap the Om’ray for some things in exchange for technology. The Agreement is meant to guarantee stability (if not stagnation) between the three. But then things change – strangers come. And strangers are not accommodated within the Agreement, which sets off all sorts of problems between the species, and within them as well.
There’s a lot of things going on within this book. Biological sexuality is not something that develops in Om’ray but seems to basically be on or off, which is intriguing and means that sexual tension isn’t really an issue (well, it is at one point, but it doesn’t overwhelm the whole story); issues of difference, and allowances for degrees of difference, are central to the Om’ray story and whether Aryl can be truly part of her Clan. In sweeping terms this is both a coming-of-age story, for Aryl, and also a first-contact story – and that part I think is done very well done, because it’s neither entirely positive nor entirely negative. Part of the story is told from the perspective of a boy from a different Clan, and this allows Czerneda to show the different perspectives of the Om’ray themselves, within their general similarities.
I think this counts as science fiction, because the strangers are aliens and there are issues of technology etc. It includes elements of fantasy, too, which I think work nicely within the story as a whole.
Reap the Wild Wind is well-paced, with an intriguing world and winsome POV characters. Very enjoyable.
You can get Reap the Wild Wind from Fishpond.
Essays, jellyfish, and the multiverse
A while back a colleague introduced me to Arts and Letters. This is a wonderful site that collects essays from around the web, most of them free to read, and – in my case – delivers them to my blog feed for idle consumption. There are a lot that come through that I just don’t care much about, but that’s ok; it’s easy enough to swipe them away as read. But sometimes there are some absolute joys in the mix. Some essays and some reviews that I know I would never have come across otherwise.
Tim Flannery’s “They’re taking over!” about jellyfish, for example. I remember reading a while back that Japan was having serious jellyfish issues, to the point where chefs were making serious attempts at turning them into delicacies so that the population could try and eat their way through them… or something… Anyway, this essay is actually a review of Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean
Over at Aeon, Andrew Crumey explores the idea of the multiverse through both physics and literature, showing how the former has sometimes followed the latter in positing and explaining the idea of multiple, parallel, divergent universes. Someone who references Borges and Feynman, Baudelaire and Everett in the same 2,600 words was pretty much always going to be writing an interesting essay, and that is indeed the case. The idea of the multiverse is a confronting one for a Christian, but that’s fine; it’s not like I’m not used to that. I enjoyed how Crumey meandered around ancient Greek and Roman philosophy through to 19th century literature, and tied together 20th and 21st century physics. Not being as au fait with the physics as I might like (nor, honestly, the philosophy), I can’t say whether it’s entirely trustworthy in the connections it draws – and I refuse to read the comments, because I just bet they range from ‘multiverse?? You loony!’ through to other unsavoury comments (but hey, at least it wasn’t written by a woman pretending like she understood the science, right?) – but as a keen general reader, it was certainly absorbing and persuasive.
Galactic Suburbia 88: Hugos
In which, Hugos. Get us at Galactic Suburbia or iTunes.
Tansy, Alisa and Alex gather only minutes after the Hugo ceremony to discuss the results! Because, HELLO: Tansy won one!!
Hugo winners
The Stats, Statbadgers!
Tansy’s Hugo Post
Culture Consumed:
Alex: The Adventures of Alyx, Joanna Russ; BSG rewatch yet again; The Memcordist, Lavie Tidhar; Firebugs, Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Alisa: KickAss 2; Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones; Ugly, Robert Hoge
Tansy: Fringe Season 1, Dorian Gray Season 2, Ugly, Robert Hoge
Plugs: Splendid Chaps Nine/Women, featuring Tansy: September 15
Glitter & Mayhem released and partying, glitter skate style.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Randomly Yours, Alex 