The 24th episode of Galactic Suburbia
In which we flit over the first shortlist of the year and some charitable links, sweep though a fortnight of culture consumed, and then leap with both feet into the pet subject of Inside Indie Press. You can download or stream us from Galactic Suburbia, or get us from iTunes.
News
BSFA Awards Shortlists
QLD Flood fundraisers for writers & readers: After the Rain; Authors for Queensland auction; QWC appeal launches Saturday, on Twitter at @writersonrafts
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Tansy: no books for me, shockingly! More Big Finish audio plays.
Alex: Agatha H and the Airship City, Phil and Kaja Foglio; Transformation Space, Marianne de Pierres; Dust, Elizabeth Bear; two stories from James Tiptree’s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (spoilery discussion); The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. Also begun a rewatch of BSG…
Alisa: No Ordinary Family; Dexter season 5
(diversion on the subject of Whether Alisa Should Watch Doctor Who)
Pet Subject: Inside Indie Press
Big news in TPP space is the closure of Speakeasy.
Is there an obvious point at which a project becomes a non-viable project?
How do you know that you’re ditching a project just because the stories don’t fit your particular idea/viewpoint?
The older books are harder to use as examples because lots of things about them were learning.
Horn – first to break even BUT I got caught on the selling to bookstores so i ended up having to sell 80% of the print run after review and buzz copies (1/4 of the print run) to break even.
Pay scales, writing contracts, competing with the US indies…
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 23!
This is my 1000th post! And it’s a Galactic Suburbia one!
In which we greet a brand new year with discussion about digital media, awards, books, feminism, feedback, more books, anti-heroes, gender roles and take a look at what to look forward to in 2011. We can be downloaded or streamed from Galactic Suburbia, or from iTunes.
News
Follow up on the Jewish fantasy discussion by Rachel Swirsky.
Locus to go digital with issue #600.
Launch of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, new critical zine with focus on women’s work.
The i09 Power List: 20 people who rocked SF & Fantasy in 2010.
Carl Brandon Awards: Hiromi Goto and Justine Larbalestier.
Hugo nominations open – last year’s members of Aussiecon 4, don’t forget you’re eligible to nominate!
Feedback: Kaia, Kathryn & Thoraiya
What Culture Have we Consumed? [AND what culture are you most looking forward to consuming in 2011?]
Alisa: Fringe Season 3, Dexter Season 4, Being Erica (ep 1), Nurse Jackie, How I Met Your Mother, reading Managing Death (Trent Jamieson)
Looking forward to: LSS 2011
Alex: Zombies vs Unicorns, ed. Larbalestier and Black; Factotum, book 3 of Monster Blood Tattoo, by DM Cornish; Dervish House, by Ian McDonald; The Killing Thing, by Kate Wilhelm; Surface Detail, by Iain M Banks.
Looking forward to: Blue Remembered Earth (probably), by Alastair Reynolds; books 2&3 of The Creature Court, Tansy Rayner Roberts; the 2011 Women in SF Book Club; Bold as Love sequence (Gwyneth Jones); Twelve Planets (from Twelfth Planet Press).
Tansy: Wiped, Richard Molesworth; The Doctor Who Christmas Special! The Gene Thieves & the Norma; Ascendant, Diana Peterfreund; Big Finish Podcast
Looking forward to: Doctor Who and Fringe (SHOCK, I know), Sherlock, Torchwood, The Demon’s Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan, Burn Bright by M. de Pierres.
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!
Belated: Boxing Day Mega Podcast
So I’m a bit behind the times, but I thought it worth mentioning that on Boxing Day, a bunch of Aussie sf podcasters (and one from Chicago) connected via Skype to record a mega podcast! Tansy and Alisa, my fellow Galactic Suburbanites, phoned in; there was Jonathan and Gary (for whom it was still Christmas!) from Coode St, Grant from Bad Film Diaries, and Ian from The Writer and the Critic. We talked about what we’d enjoyed about 2010 and what we’re looking forward to in 2011, and – amazingly – with seven people, we managed to record the shorted podcast any of the seven of us had ever been involved in! (As far as I could tell. I may be wrong.)
Jonathan Strahan, eminent editor and podcaster, was our recorder and producer, so you can get it from his website or download it via his podcast (The Coode St Podcast) on iTunes.
Galactic Suburbia 22
You can download or stream the episode from Galactic Suburbia, or get us from iTunes.
In which we have run out of our supply of feminist ire for 2010 and are reduced to being happy bunnies with rainbows and vanilla sprinkles. Also, we discuss re-reading, re-watching, and our (apparently unhealthy) emotional attachment to beloved books. With zombies. BONUS: see if you can pick how many times yours truly screwed up the recording because my stooopid Skype crashed. Is fixed now.
News
Black Quill nominations.
Best of 2010 Tables of Contents, Rich Horton & Jonathan Strahan (Niall Harrison tweeted about online percentage, 14/29 stories in Strahan – and 16/28 in Horton. Last year JS had 4/29 and Rich had 7/30).
Torque Control’s Week of Women & SF (also here).
Swancon invited guests announced.
Pet Subject
On re-reading. Did you re-read books as a teen? Do you re-read now, or would you if you had the time and the publishing industry stopped for a year (or three)? Why/not… (on re-reading The Belgariad).
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa – Fringe Season 1 and half of Season 2
Tansy – Feed, by Mira Grant, The Five Doctors easter egg commentary
Alex – Quantum Thief (Hannu Rajaniemi), Zima Blue (Alastair Reynolds)
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!
Episode 21 of Galactic Suburbia
You can get us from iTunes, or download from Galactic Suburbia.
In which we work, play, shake up our format a little (gasp!) and cover the life & death of magazines, the changing face of the industry, respect for non fiction, sexual harassment, rants, reboots and as usual, books, books and more books. Also a few sneaky clues about what Twelfth Planet Press is publishing next year!
News
Realms of Fantasy is back, again…
Escape Pod expands: “We have been pushing to expand what Escape Pod does, adding an SF blog and distributing our stories via magazine format. We’re also becoming a pro market, and hope to keep paying our authors pro rates well into 2011 if the donations make it possible.”
Cheryl Morgan talks about paying for reviews as semipro.
On the Cooks Source scandal and seeing stuff on the internet as ‘public domain’.
Jim C Hines on reporting sexual harassment in SF/F.
Old men complaining? When you get old, do you by consequence lose your sense of wonder? Just simply because you’ve read everything? And is/should all SF be aimed/written for the 60 year old man? And Jason Sanford responds
New Buffy Reboot
New Friend of the Podcast: The Writer & the Critic (Mondy & Kirstyn).
Chat, rants and backpedalling…
What Culture have we Consumed?
Alex: Blameless, Gail Carriger; “The Devil in Mr Pussy,” Paul Haines; Women of Other Worlds, ed. Helen Merrick and Tess Williams; Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones; Day of the Triffids (2009 BBC production)
Alisa: works too hard, and also Fringe.
Tansy: To Write Like a Woman, Joanna Russ; Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore by Sheri S Tepper; Sourdough & Other Stories, Angela Slatter; China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh, Mists of Avalon movie
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia 20!!
You can download us from iTunes or from our website!
In which we talk World Fantasy, female editors, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr, Connie Willis, Pat Murphy, and more World Fantasy – plus Alisa tells us off for not mentioning how awesome certain books actually are (we totally did).
News
World Fantasy Award winners!
Peter Tennant at Black Static looks at the stats for women being published in recent horror & dark fantasy anthologies; the Hathor Legacy compares representation of female authors in two recent horror anthols.
Cat Sparks is the new fiction editor of Cosmos, taking over from Damien Broderick.
Discussion on the lack of female editors in pro fantasy publications (read through the comments which raise many important points about the post).
Steampunkgate (yes, really):
Charles Stross criticises the “glut” of steampunk and calls it out at a subgenre;
Nisi Shawl talks about the literary side of steampunk just isn’t as diverse and interesting as the other aspects of steampunk… yet;
Catherynne Valente rants and then raves about steampunk;
Scott Westerfeld gets cranky about the steampunk haterz.
Small press turned imprint to publish line of multicultural SF/Fantasy for children.
Jeff VanderMeer reports on Amazon Best of SF/F lists for 2010.
What have we been reading/listening to?
Alex: Changeless, Gail Carriger; The Two of Them, Joanna Russ; Brightness Falls from the Air, James Tiptree Jr; Full Moon City, ed Darrell Schweitzer and Martin Greenberg; backlog of Tor.com (esp. AM Dellamonica’s “The Cage” and Robert Reed’s “The Next Invasion“) and Strange Horizons (esp. Sandra McDonald’s “Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots“).
Alisa: Fire Watch, Remake (both Connie Willis); White Cat by Holly Black; Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Tansy: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, NK Jemisin, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, by Pat Murphy.
Pet Subject
Capclave and World Fantasy Convention! Alex and Tansy interrogate Alisa about her trip away, her loot, her adventures and all the gossip.
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Galactic Suburbia #19: the Greco-Roman issue
You can get us from iTunes or download us here!
While Alisa is away, Alex & Tansy play… in ANCIENT GREECE! We talk awards, the end of publishing as we know it, stressful feminist debates, Vonda McIntyre, Twitter fiction, Stargate, and whether there’s enough Greek & Roman mythology in modern fantasy.
News
Tansy wins WSFA Small Press Award for Siren Beat;
Last Drink Bird Head Award Winners;
John Joseph Adams takes over from Cat Rambo & Sean Wallace as editor of Fantasy Magazine;
Realms of Fantasy dies: from Shawna McCarthy, and the publisher;
Wiscon committee disappoints through inaction (also here); and then finally moves to disinvite Elizabeth Moon as GoH (warning, many of the comments on that one are pretty awful to wade through); also here and here;
Paul Collins on how the ebook revolution isn’t working so well ;
Cat Valente on tedium, evil, and why the term ‘PC’ is only used these days to hurt and silence people;
Peter M Ball explaining how white male privilege uses requests for civility to silence the legitimate anger of others;
on Vonda McIntyre’s “Dreamsnake”, a controversial Hugo winning novel from 1979 which has been out of print for 10 years; and an interview with Vonda McIntyre about the book.
What have we been reading/listening to?
Tansy: Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson; Blameless, Gail Carriger, Bleed by Peter M Ball, “Twittering the Universe” by Mari Ness, Shine & “Clockwork Fairies” by Cat Rambo, Tor.com.
Alex: Silver Screen, Justina Robson; Sprawl; Deep Navigation, Alastair Reynolds; The Beginning Place, Ursula le Guin; abandoned Gwyneth Jones’ Escape Plans; listening to The 5th Race, ep 1 (Stargate SG1 fan podcast).
Pet Subject
Classical mythology in modern fantasy. Can it still work? Do you have to get it ‘right’?
Book mentioned:
The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Medea, Cassandra, Electra by Kerry Greenwood
Olympic Games, Leslie What
Dan Simmons’ Ilium and Olympos
Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips
Troy, Simon Brown
Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight, also David Malouf’s Ransom – along the same lines as Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin
Robert Holdstock’s Celtika, Iron Grail, Broken Kings
A Galactic Suburbia special
And I forgot to mention…
The Galactic Suburbia Spoilerific Book Club!
Consider yourself warned. This is an incredibly spoilery discussion of LIAR by Justine Larbalestier. It’s not a little bit spoilery. It’s a LOT spoilery. And if you don’t believe us that this is the kind of book that you really truly don’t want to be spoiled for, consider the facts:
1) We invented the Galactic Spoilerific Book Club purely to discuss this book
2) We actually feel a bit uncomfortable even mentioning how much you don’t want to be spoiled for this book, because that in itself might mess with your reading experience
3) You trust us, right?
If on the other hand you have read LIAR by Justine Larbalestier, come on by and listen to us flap our hands as we try to articulate just what’s going on in this book.
Also, stretching back into the mists of time before Galactic Suburbia existed (hard to imagine, I know) check out Alex, Alisa and Tansy podcasting back in 2008 with our friend Kathryn, on the (then) entire bibliography of works by Justine. Yes, it’s a Larbalestpalooza!
Galactic Suburbia becomes an adult
I , like you, have to just accept that these show notes are accurate, as I was absent for the recording of this, the 18th episode of Galactic Suburbia! However, Tansy and Alisa have never given me reason to doubt them… yet…. The podcast can be got from iTunes, or streamed/downloaded from here, which is where I’m heading after uploading this post.
Episode 18: Special Horror Edition
In which we discuss translated awards, constructive feminist discourse on the internet, make a special Swancon announcement, and dissect our complex relationship with the horror genre.
News
Geffen Awards (Israel)
Torque Control discussion on women & the Clarke & the dire state of women in British SF, with list of all British releases of SF or SFnal books by women in 2010.
— inspired by interview with Tricia Sullivan.
Torque Control announces they will be blogging about 2010 British SF releases by women in December and ask for readers to join them. Also call for contributions of top 10 female authored SF books in the last decade for a theoretical “future classics’ list.
Super Special Swancon Announcement!
What have we been reading/listening to?
TANSY: The Wiscon Chronicles IV edited by Sylvia Kelso; Azu Manga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma; Asimovs & F&SF, Salon Futura
ALISA: secret projects & another Book I Am Not Reading
Pet Subject: while Alex is away, let’s talk about HORROR
– we’re both pretty selective about the horror/dark fiction we read. What does it have to do to catch our eye?
– favourite horror/dark writers
– where do we draw the line on what we like/can appreciate in horror?
– does our feminism get in the way of reading/enjoying horror fiction?
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs and on Facebook! and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes!
Galactic Suburbia turns 17
You can download us from iTunes, or go to Galactic Suburbia to get it from our website.
In which we talk about awesome women, excellent short stories, and make Alisa throw away a book! Our pet topic is film-to-book, book-to-film and why you’d want to move a story from format to format.
News
The Winners of the British Fantasy Awards 2010 announced.
FemSpec: announcement of new feminist press (via Aqueduct Press).
365 Days of Women Writers blog.
New podcast: Helen Merrick and Tama Leaver do Pangalactic Interwebs.
Tansy: Diana Comet, Zombies v. Unicorns
Pet Subject
Please send feedback to galacticsuburbia@gmail.com!
Randomly Yours, Alex 