What Night Hides: review
I first read this book in manuscript form, because Kate is a long-time (I could hear the objections over the water and out of the future when I considered writing “old”) friend of mine. When it got published – last year! – Kate sent me a copy with the inscription “at last” – and at last I have got around to reading it. Of course, I remembered the awesome denouement, which meant I didn’t get the same thrill as I did the first time through; nonetheless it was still a wild ride.
One of Kate’s great talents is an ear for odd, rhythmical, and charming description. She links together sometimes outrageous words to compose a scene, drawing in visuals and sounds and even scents to bring together a very real, if whimsical scene: “colder rays and tentacles of witch light fountained, splashing in an ever-widening search pattern over spines and shelves, turning the cobwebs infra-blue…” (34). She also has a habit of incorporating music and lyrics into her stories, sometimes making connections that seem quite peculiar unless you’re able to follow the devious turnings of her brain and keep up with the pop culture references.
As to plot – it’s urban fantasy, I guess? The chief characters are Josh, who appears to have no memories older than a few months; his new employer, Scarlet, a Nichtthane – someone responsible for keeping the bogeymen away from humanity; and Kelly, Scarlet’s seneschal, largely responsible for keeping Scarlet herself away from humanity, at least until she’s appropriately caffeinated. There’s a lot of banter and discussion of shoes in between dealing with vampires, were-creatures, and other, less immediately recognisable, supernatural critters. The common thread through it all, at least in theory, is Josh and his past; actually though I think Scarlet and Kelly’s relationship is the more interesting, as Scarlet continues to deal with being nearly immortal and Kelly shows that although intensely loyal, he doesn’t belong to Scarlet – there’s a wider world requiring attention. These stories were initially written as short stories, and sometimes it feels like it. Overall, though, they do hang together nicely.
I was also amused, of course, to recognise two of my very own connections to Kate within these pages: a vampire with a tshirt reading “it’s all liminal to me” – liminal being my very favourite word and one I’ve made Kate roll her eyes over too many times to count; and another character wearing a tshirt reading “Dear Pluto, no matter what they say you’ll always be a planet to me” – a tshirt that I own, courtesy of the author. Does this mean that I have been Tuckerised??
This is my first review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge for 2013!
You can buy What Night Hides at Fishpond.
A history of blue
Did you know blue has been the favourite colour of Westerners over the last couple of centuries?
This book is and intriguing idea, although not entirely well executed. I enjoyed the broad sweep of time that Pastoureau attempted to cover – the Neolithic and ancient use of colour very briefly, the medieval world and on in a bit more detail – because the comparison across hundreds of years is fascinating. Unsurprisingly though, this was also one of its downfalls, since the occasional times it treated an idea or subject in detail it felt out of place; and the lack of detail in some areas annoyed me. In some ways this felt, perhaps deliberately, like this was a preparatory work; a number of times Pastoureau raised questions as areas requiring further research, or mentioned medieval manuscripts that have yet to be transliterated or studied in any fashion.
In appearance this is halfway between a history book and a coffee table number. It’s beautifully presented, and the pictures themselves are delightful – most pages have one or two, sometimes three, pictures, illustrating some pertinent point about where and how blue was being used, or other uses of colour at relevant points. But the text is too dense to really work as an art book, while it’s not long enough somehow for it to feel like a really serious treatment of the subject – especially not over such a vast span of time.
As a history book, I remain unconvinced by some of Pastoureau’s suggestions about how blue worked in culture. The lack of blue in very early art, Neolithic right through to much ancient illustration, is curious but I didn’t entirely buy his explanation for its lack of symbolism and therefore appearance and I’m not sure why. Perhaps it just didn’t feel explained enough to accept such a radical idea. This problem permeated much of the text, in fact; the sober, moral overtones that blue acquired thanks to the Protestants, as well as the issues discussed around its symbolism in the later medieval period, were presented as a little bit too definitive, a little bit too unarguable, for me to be entirely comfortable. Clearly Pastoureau was not setting out to write the definitive work on the colour; he himself points out that a vast amount more work needs to be done in a whole range of areas before such a thing is possible. And perhaps it’s also a fault of translation; maybe there was a bit more uncertainty in the original French?
Anyway, overall this is a fascinating book that has made me think about colour and its uses, but not entirely satisfactory.
Galactic Suburbia 77
In which Alex eats fig frangipane made by her friend Dan… and Alisa and Tansy are bad at birthdays. If you eat cake while eating this podcast, let us know what kind! You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY US WE ARE THREE!
News
TIPTREE AWARDS
Random House and their new digital only imprints – specifically Hydra.
SFWA response to Hydra letter
Random House responds
NOTE: Since we recorded this, revisions have been made to the Random House imprint contracts.
Culture Consumed
ALISA: the life of a publisher…
TANSY: A Game of Thrones (the book) and nothing else ever again because THERE ARE MORE BOOKS.
ALEX: Warehouse 13, season 1; Shadow Unit; Arc 1.4; The Triangle; Anita Sarkeesian’s first Tropes vs Women in Video Games
Since we recorded this, Sean the Blogonaut has also posted about his thoughts on rape threats & gender issues in “grimdark” fantasy.
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!
Galactic Suburbia 76
In which we celebrate the real beginning of awards season, taste honey and launch Alisa into her new world as PhD student of publishing… You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
News
Nebula shortlist
SF Signal Nebula post (with unfortunate comments and awesome responses)
Stella Prize longlist with special appearance by our own Margo Lanagan.
The Kitschies winners announced
Interesting link found after recording: Lavie Tidhar on the Kitschies & diversity
Libba Bray on misogyny at the Oscars
Also, go read NK Jemisin talking about race, misogyny & Quvenzhané Wallis with “Fantasy fans, where’s your outrage?”
We didn’t discuss that one on the podcast because – well, what can we possibly say as three white women that Jemisin didn’t say a million times more effectively? Read her instead.
Thoraiya Dyer interviewed for Cosmos Magazine about how becoming a full time mum was actually great for her writing career.
Splashdance Silver back in e-edition – Tansy’s first novel, now celebrating its 15th anniversary.
Culture Consumed
ALEX: Etiquette and Espionage, Gail Carriger; The Chains that you Refuse, Elizabeth Bear; Rainbow Bridge, Gwyneth Jones; Caprica.
TANSY: Perfections, Kirstyn McDermott; For Darkness Shows the Stars, Diana Peterfreund
ALISA: The Honey Month, Amal El-Mohtar
New Segment: Diary of a Publisher – it’s our duty (and that includes all our listeners) to keep Alisa honest as she walks away from her dayjob to take up the challenge of a PhD in creative publishing. Mind the flannel!
It’s our birthday next fortnight – have cake ready for when you listen!
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!
Tiptree Award Anthology #2
For those just joining us, James Tiptree Jr was a magnificent SF writer whose work Robert Silverberg once described as “ineluctably masculine.” Which is amusing because she was actually Alice B Sheldon. Anyway, in 1991 some people decided there should be an award named for a woman, and that it should be given to works that “explore and expand gender”. So, to be quirky, they named it for Sheldon/Tiptree. And the award has been going since then, and there are now a number of anthologies that reflect it: excerpts from novels, complete short stories, but also other work that reflects the issues that the award desires to highlight. Which is awesome.
Debbie Notkin’s introduction does a marvellous job of discussing the very first award and how it was decided on, as well as – most interestingly – pointing out that each jury has been forced to decide all over again what it means to “explore and expand gender.” Which is good to be reminded of, because there are definitely stories in the anthology whose inclusion I was a little confused by. And this, Notkin says, is totally fine.
In honour of Tiptree/Sheldon, the anthology opens with a short essay from Julie Phillips, the biographer of Tiptree/Sheldon (which I reviewed here, and as I write I am listening to The Writer and the Critic discuss it), about talking and talking too much which is completely fascinating (and somewhat connected to the current furore over Hilary Mantel’s words about the media representation of royalty?). It’s matched with a letter from Sheldon herself, to the psychologist Rudolf Arnheim, talking about identity and science fiction and science and friendship, which is such a nice touch. And then the anthology jumps straight into Raphael Carter’s “Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation by KN Sirsi and Sandra Botkin,” which can only be read by itself, must be read in a single sitting, and may then require that you sit staring at a wall for a few minutes. Because it is mind blowing. It’s written as a thoroughly researched scientific article, where two scientists from different backgrounds come to a startling discovery about how gender is perceived and what that means for identity and… that doesn’t really explain it at all. It’s very accessible as well as challenging and I can absolutely understand why it won.
L Timmel Duchamp’s collection Love’s Body, Dancing in Time was shortlisted in 2004, and from it this anthology includes “The Gift.” For all that it’s set in a distant future where the narrator is a travel writer who discusses other planets rather than other countries, there’s something rather medieval in its suggestion that there is more to an understanding of gender than a basic dichotomy. And I don’t mean ‘medieval’ in a pejorative sense, but in the sense that some medieval thinkers seemed to be groping towards a similar sense – and for similar reasons as suggested here. That aside, one of my favourite parts of this story is the description of the meal composed around the ideas of Matrix Aesthetics. And made me wish that something similar could possibly exist, that combined visual, aural, and taste sensations all designed to complement one another.
The next two parts of the anthology are again from 2004, this time excerpts from the winning novels. The Tiptree Award is an interesting one in that it seems to me one of the few really big-name awards that considers all work for one award (shorts and novels), and which is not afraid of having a tie (which has happened a few times). Firstly here, Joe Haldemann’s Camouflage – the first four chapters and “and two from a little further along,” according to the reading notes. I HAVE to read this novel. It’s utterly gripping, right from the start: an alien comes to earth millennia ago, and is capable of changing its outward appearance to be… whatever it likes. Imagine the consequences of that on ideas of gender and identity. This is complemented by an excerpt from Johanna Sinisalo’s Troll: A Love Story, which I imagine I will also get around to reading. Translated from the Finnish, it does indeed involve a troll, as well as (again according to the reading notes) mail-order bride slavery and Finnish folklore and homoerotic imagery. In this excerpt, the narrator’s night has started badly, with a failed date, and gets worse when she finds a bunch of boys attacking an animal. Things get weirder after that.
“Looking for Clues” is Nalo Hopkinson’s guest of Honour speech from WisCon (the convention where the Tiptree is announced) in 2002. As a woman of colour, as she explains in her speech, finding people “like her” was one of the aims of her extensive early reading – because there weren’t that many. She takes a winding road through various media and her experiences to look at the different sorts of role models (and not) available through her childhood and teenaged years, as well as making pointed remarks about people who insist on remaining ignorant about the issues. It would have been a brilliant speech to hear in person.
Eileen Gunn’s collection Stable Strategies is another one that got shortlisted in 2004, and as a representative this anthology chose “Nirvana High,” co-written with Leslie What. This is one of the inclusions that I simply do not get. It’s a clever story and it says interesting things about difference, and about growing up as ‘different’, but I don’t see that it says things about gender that connect it to the Tiptree. But I’m sure Notkin would say “and?”
From 1996 comes Jonathan Lethem’s “Five F***s” (sorry, I would like to keep this profanity free!). It’s a series of six vignettes, and in all of them there is a woman whose life appears to be different each time she has sex with a particular man. Indeed, it’s not just her life, but the world around her; in this sense it reminds me a bit of Lathe of Heaven. The lover does not appear in every story; in all but the first, there is a different man – Pupkiss, a policeman (mostly). So there are elements of the procedural to some of the sections, but not really. It’s one of those stories, as you may be able to guess, that is particularly hard to explain. It should just be read.
Carol Emshwiller’s “All of Us Can Almost…” is another story in the I don’t entirely get it pile. Shortlisted in 2004, it’s about desire and lying and determination, and while I think it’s a very good story and fascinating in what it says about interactions between people and expectations, I don’t entirely see that the gender aspects – which I can see – are an interesting enough or explored enough aspect to get it shortlisted. Again, refer to Notkin’s advice.
Gwyneth Jones is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, so I was pleased to see an entry from her here. Rather than a piece of fiction, it’s a paper she gave called “The Brains of Female Hyena Twins: On the Future of Gender,” presented at the Academic Fantastic Fiction Network conference in 1994. In it, she ranges far and wide over scientific papers that discuss aspects of gender and biological sex in animals (those hyenas, peacocks, lizards and fish…), as well as gender and sex in humans and their malleability, as well as some frightening aspects of the battle of the sexes. It’s erudite and occasionally witty (insofar as such a topic ought to be), and outright challenging to biological determinists.
The penultimate place belongs to Ursula le Guin, for Another Story, or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea which I have read before but fell in love with all over again, reading it here. The planet of O is such a richly realised place – their marriage customs so breathtakingly original – and they’re not even the centre of the story, which is I think mostly about scientific research and its impact on individuals, as well as the impact of family, and the choices that we make… It’s wonderful.
Finally, Jaye Lawrence’s “Kissing Frogs” is described as “a pleasing after-dinner mint of a story” by the reading notes, and I think that’s about right. It’s a retelling of the fairy story, of course; it’s amusing and sweet and I can’t go into any details because the point of it is the little twists Lawrence weaves in. A highly enjoyable way to complete the anthology, anyway.
What this anthology does, and I presume what it set out to do, is give a broad overview of the point of the Tiptree Award – showcasing works that various juries have thought worth honouring, as well as including work that must help to inform the juries, and authors, and readers about the ideas of gender that the award wants to recognise. It succeeds in this aim, and no doubt in a secondary aim as well – of publicising those names whose work has been recognised, so that they get more recognition, and more people are challenged and inspired by their words.
You can get this anthology from Fishpond.
Zendegi: a Greg Egan novel
My e-copy of this book categorises it as “Fantasy; short stories.” It is neither. Rather, it is a near-future novel about politics, virtual reality, religion, family relationships, and death.
No, it is not a Patrick Rothfuss or George RR Martin-style tome. It is elegant.
Two strands: Nasim is an Iranian woman living in America, working on the mapping of individual finch brains to try and create a generic brain map. Martin is an Australian journalist working in Iran, who gets to cover escalating political unrest. (This book was published in 2010….) Flick forward several years, and Nasim is living in Iran and now working on Zendegi, a virtual-reality platform used by millions of people, mostly for entertainment. Martin is still in Iran, married with a son. I trusted that the two strands would eventually cross, but I really couldn’t figure out how. The answer is both ‘cleverly’ and ‘via tragedy’ (Egan, you are nasty).
I am in serious danger of becoming quite the Egan fangirl. Just so you all know.
Egan does a marvellous job here of entwining the intimate and domestic with large-scale societal issues. Personal tragedies are neither hyped up to become world-ending nor elided as insignificant. The plot moves carefully between, for example, Zendegi as entertainment for a six year old and Zendegi as bleeding-edge technology – and how the company can deal with competitors. Egan portrays politics as they are seen by a slightly-above-average interested citizen, rather than focussing on politicians; he touches on religion as it might be experienced, rather than trying to show rights and wrongs. He’s a sensitive and compassionate author, but did I mention nasty? Also, I think he writes women well, which is something I’m coming to appreciate more and more. Nasim’s feelings of anxiety over having left Iran, and wanting to return, read realistically. In fact, overall human attitudes and relationships read as believable: complex and contradictory and frustrating and glorious.
In a more classically cyberpunk novel, Zendegi would get far more of the focus that it does here; characters don’t actually spend that much time in the virtual world, for example. It is incredibly significant for both Martin and Nasim by the end, but still I am a little surprised by its use as the title. I think Egan has hit on a more likely way for virtual entertainment to encroach on our lives than most early cyberpunkers did – more subtle, and perhaps more insidious for the fact. It’s really nicely presented.
This is a novel brimful of complex and challenging ideas that is an absolute, pretty much effortless, delight to read.
You can buy Zendegi from Fishpond.
Scorched Supper on New Niger
I got hold of a copy of this amazing novelette (I think? 17,000-ish words) from one of Galactic Suburbia’s wonderful listeners, who is the Editorial Director of a new digital publisher, Snackreads – he sent through a copy because he thought it would be up our collective alley. 
To which the answer, I think, is OH YES.
A future where there are space ships carrying cargo between planets as easily as trucks do today… but where there is, for some unknown reason, a societal reaction (on some planets) against women having the freedom of movement to do things like be in space. Dee has taken over a freighting company from her formidable aunt, but is facing difficulties in the shape of her sister, her sister’s husband, and mounting debt. When she has to land on New Niger, things appear to be as desperate as they can be, so she ends up making a deal with a competitor… and things go from there.
The things I love about this story are many: I love Dee’s voice as she makes clear just how much it means to her, to be a pilot, and just how much she hates the idea of being trapped by her brother-in-law. I adore the idea of New Niger (although I must admit I don’t know how accurate Charnas is in her descriptions of Old Niger, and it may well be that there are some things that are offensive/otherwise wince-worthy, and if there are I’d love to hear it) – people of colour in space! Who would’ve thought it! I particularly love (although see previous brackets) the way that one character there, in particular, plays on racial stereotypes very consciously to her own advantage. The denouement had me quietly cackling with glee. I enjoyed the pace of the narrative, the action overall, the ‘domestic’ setting (family feuds) commenting on larger social realities…
I should get me some more Charnas to read, I guess.
Exile from Space: a short Judith Merril story
I’ve been wanting to read more Judith Merril since Helen Merrick’s Secret Feminist Cabal, since Merril features pretty prominently in the early years. The lady wrote “That only a Mother could love” – a seriously amazing piece of fiction that I’m sure Russ would have dismissed as ‘galactic suburbia’ but I think is staggering in its suggestion about life for the ordinary woman in The Future.
Anyway, “Exile from Space” – the basic story is young woman going to the city for the first time, but there’s clearly something a bit odd about this young woman because of how she talks about her education, and about other people… and it quickly becomes apparent that she has not been living with other humans, at least for her teen years. So although she herself is human and passes for human, she has to deal with all these weird things like eating, and shopping, and interacting with humans – such that she might as well be an alien. Oh, the many levels of ‘alien’. And then, of course, there’s a man…
Merril’s writing is delightful and elegant, and conveys the sheer weirdness of human existence simply and clearly. So many things we take for granted…. This story makes me wish I could find more of Merril’s work, but I keep coming up with nothing wherever I look. I got this story from The Gutenberg Project.
Galactic Suburbia Award
In our last episode (previously, on GS…), we announced the winner of the Galactic Suburbia Award for 2012. You can now read Elizabeth Lhuede’s acceptance speech over here at the podcast blog.
You can also see the full shortlist, complete with links so you can go and check out the awesomeness of everyone for yourself.
Dreaming Metal
I missed a first-in-the-series, here, which is a bit frustrating; I’m usually pretty good about not doing that. Anyway, if it’s going to bug you like it annoys me, go read Dreamships first. This one will wait.
Scott likes tackling hard topics, and here she’s asking – when does intelligence become intelligence? When can, in crude terms, a computer be regarded as a being in its own right? Does there have to be a deliberate effort on the part of humans for it to happen, or could it develop accidentally? And when we finally find that silicone intelligence shares the same space as us… what will be our reaction? Because we have such a good track record of dealing with humans with different perspectives from our own, let alone an entirely different type of intelligence. Scott presents some intriguing suggestions to these questions – and a few answers, but nothing completely definitive. It’s nicely tantalising, in a lot of ways.
I generally love Scott’s worlds, and this is no different. Humanity has spread to several planets; this story is set on Persephone. For all that there’s some seriously upgraded tech, and that it’s set an unknown distance into the future, it still feels recognisably human. Like, after initial freak-out-edness, it seems like I could probably live on Persephone. This is probably helped by the fact that the story revolves around people whose own lives revolve around that rather ubiquitous human characteristic, a love of music. Initial events are spurred on by the death of much-loved music star, and one of the main characters has a souped-up illusions show at one of the ‘Empires’ – which I think are basically futuristic theatres, catering to a variety of entertainments, from rock music to vaudeville (or their futuristic equivalents). I love this idea that the human desire to be entertained, on the one hand, and the equally pressing desire to express oneself in public somehow, will continue into the future – it’s something that doesn’t get enough airplay in SF I think.
Another aspect of the world-building that I really appreciated is that it’s clearly not a monoculture. I think this is the one main area where not having read Dreamships was a problem (aside from a couple of plot points that I managed to catch up on); the use of ‘coolie’ and ‘yanqui’ and other terms clearly referring to ethnic background didn’t always make sense to me – or, where I could but out the basic meaning (like with those two), it sometimes took me a while to figure out all the subtleties, like whose allegiances lay where and who felt which grievances. Nonetheless – this is a future that is not overwhelmingly white, where cultures have continued to develop and take on bits and pieces of older traditions and moosh them together, and where people can live on the same planet and not be identical. Also, where a common expletive is “Elvis Christ”.
The plot? Assassinations, destruction of property, intrigue, romance – all revolving around that idea of artificial intelligence, how it might come about, what should be done about it if it does, whether machines taking over from humanity in any area is a good thing, and all of those good things.
Scott writes beautifully. She switches between characters effortlessly and gives each a distinct voice. She matches a great plot with hard questions and does wonderful service to both. It’s not quite as cyberpunk as, say, Trouble and Her Friends, but it’s wonderful science fiction.
Randomly Yours, Alex 