Interesting article on "canon"

I've been thinking of writing on this topic for a while (more later this week), but Matt Cheney has a great take on the tricky issue of literary canon that I think many readers here would enjoy.

Interesting article on the need to replace Lovecraft as a "figurehead" for SF/F

Daniel José Older penned this piece earlier this week for The Guardian that touches upon the still-raw nerve of having H.P. Lovecraft (who, among other things, was known for his virulent racism, a prejudice that went beyond even the now-awful standards of the early 20th century US).  Although I agree with most of Older's points, I do wonder if his main arguments are weakened somewhat by trying to argue in an almost throwaway fashion the point of Lovecraft's writing style vis-à-vis Octavia Butler.  Perhaps others have more detailed thoughts on this and other issues raised in this article?

Interesting...

I literally have only two minutes before I have to leave for work, so I'll edit this post tonight to reflect my take on this.  But for now, presented without comment:

Apologies and Finality

The Things That We Do:  On Mistakes, On Apologies

Edit:  

Words are cheap unless there is a continual effort of repentance here. While these apologies sound good, it'll be a long time for many to forgive her actions. But in reading this, I couldn't help but think of those times that I might have helped enabled this behavior. I did at the time two years ago think her acerbic reviews were a nice, bracing counter to the "cult of niceness," but I did become uncomfortable at seeing the personal attacks, however at the time I was either silent or maybe slightly complicit in the verbal abuse. I regretted and still regret this and that is something I should note before commenting at all on this matter.

 So in reading this past week all of these posts on the RH matter, I saw a lot of hurt and anger on display. Words alone will not heal these griefs. Hopefully those who were friends before this can find it in themselves to reconcile. Those injured relationships and betrayed trusts are the worst casualties of this. So yeah, she has a lot to do to redress all of these hurts. If she'll do this, then things will improve. But if it's just one more way to deflect ultimate responsibility and to leave open a recurrence of this hateful behavior, then all of these words will not just be in vain, but they'll just be one more dagger to the hearts of those willing to trust. Time will tell. This is all I have to say on this, as anything else would risk continuing the arguments I've seen elsewhere over the past week.

Three interesting posts on SF needing to "catch up"

I don't have time today to respond to these in length, but here are three interesting posts on the topic of SF (the self-defined "community" aspect of it and not necessarily literary elements that might be associated with it) and how the form/community may be "lagging behind" other contemporary literatures that employ elements frequently associated with SF to greater effect than those writers/communities who self-identify as "genre."

David Hebblethwaite - "Science Fiction Playing Catch Up"

Nina Allan - "On Playing Catch Up"

Ian Sales -  "Fables of the Deconstruction"


If I have time this weekend, I'll write something more substantive on my own take on this subject.

A few interesting articles on genders and literatures

I'm mostly just going to post these links without commentary because I would rather read how readers react than to provide any attempt at scintillating discourse, which I doubt I'd manage to achieve here.  Seriously though, these are some important socio-literary issues being raised and I think the perspectives need to be considered carefully.

Athena Andreadis on "Lest We Forget"

Storify of Natalie Luhrs (Radish Reviews)' Twitter comments on gender disparities/criticism in SF/F

Publishing and Prejudice:  5 Female Writers Weigh in on Sexism in the Literary World


Just the tip of several icebergs, but I'm still more in the reflective phase of considering these points, so I'll leave it up to others for now to comment on the claims made in these three pieces.

Interesting article about changes in reading related to the digitalization of text

A couple of days ago, I saw a link to an article by Franco Moretti called "Changes."  Much of what he said resonated with me, even when I did not always agree with the points being made.  Of particular interest is this bit from the introduction:

The first thing that happens, when a literary historian starts using computers to think about literature, is that the object of study changes. Not just the tool; the object itself. “The objects studied by contemporary historians” have this peculiarity, Krzysztof Pomian observed some time ago, that “no one has ever seen them, and no one could ever have seen them […] because they have no equivalent within lived experience.” He was thinking of things like demographic evolution and literacy rates, and it’s true, no one can have a “lived experience” of these “invisible objects,” as he also calls them; our objects are different of course, they are literary ones, but they too have no equivalent within the usual experience of literature.

 I remember a similar discussion regarding the shift of object study when I was in grad school and our class was discussing E.P. Thompson's Customs in Common, in particular the shift in temporal and spatial values as English society shifted from a predominantly oral culture to a predominantly print one in conjunction with the introduction of accurate mechanical clocks.  There are certainly some parallels that can be made between our times and those of early modern to early industrial European societies.  Yet I am uncertain if Moretti fully argues his case in this article, as there were times that I felt that more could have been said about the possible parallels that I note above.  Regardless, it is a thought provoking article and certainly worth one's time and consideration.

Interesting discussion on non-binary genders

I've been a bit too busy with my professional life (which has drama enough of its own to keep me occupied) to have followed this in "real time," but apparently there was this article on Tor.com that led to some reactions from writers and another blogger (and I know there had to have been other, related discussions elsewhere, but I am just following a link from my blogroll due to lack of time).  Their points are best read (or in one case, perhaps laughed at?) in full, so I won't bother to recapitulate them here.  What instead I will do is ask a couple of questions that are unvoiced, at least directly, in most of this.

What are some of the "genre" books that focus on non-binary genders?  (From what I understand, it is not just Western European/American understanding of transsexuality, but also different roles/customs in non-Western societies)?  I know Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (there should be a sort of Godwin's Law written about how in the course of any discussion of "progressive" cultural/sexual issues, the probability approaches one of someone citing this book, but I digress) was mentioned, but other works are there?

Secondly, would it be more or less likely that non-SF/F books will have characters that do not fit into binary (male/female) gender roles?  I am thinking of Booker Prize-nominated Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis in particular, but I feel like there have been others that I have read in which the issue of gender is not as clear-cut.

Any suggestions?  I am much less interested in arguing the issue of non-binary gender (the linked articles alone suffice for that) as I am in learning of titles in which there are characters that are not traditional male/female in gender.

What do these seemingly disparate lists have in common?

Late December has seen the usual proliferation of lists.  Best of 2012.  Best of "centuries."  Best of the rest.  Best upcoming books.  Maybe even a best of the rest of the best of the rest of that list of best something-or-other.  I have read several, both those linked to on Twitter and those I see when I visit certain sites.  But there's a growing set of commonalities with many of them.  Let's see if you can detect a few of the commonalities without me stating it directly.  Oh, and there are some striking differences as well, which make the sets of commonalities even more fascinating to consider.

Locus "Best of Centuries" Fantasy/SF

Top 10 Anticipated Fantasy Books for 2013 - Part One:  Readers' Choice

Best Fantasy Books of 2012

"The Hotties"

Top of the Scots:  Five Favourites

The Readers Episode 56 (list, podcast)

What We Enjoyed in 2012 & The Future

SFF World Reviewers' Top SF, Fantasy & Horror 2012

The Top 5 Books of 2012 in a Few Categories

Favorite Books of 2012

Only the Best (of the Year) - Top 10 New Releases of 2012

Top 10 Books of 2012

Publishers Weekly's SF/F Best 2012

Books I Loved in 2012

11 Favorite Small Press Reads of 2012

2012:  A Year in Reviews

TQC Favorites of 2012

2013 Resolutions (contains a list of 22 favorites from 2012)

This year, next year

Looking Forward to 2013

End of the Year Booklist:  What Are Your Favorites?

2012 in Review:  Reviewed by Our Reviewers

Fifty Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels to Look Forward to in 2013

15 Great Science Fiction/Fantasy Books to Read in 2013

Books of the Year

Looking forward, looking back

The Best Fantasy Releases of 2012

The Wertzone Awards 2012

Top 10 (11?) "Indie" Books of 2012

The patterns I noticed were interesting, but there are some gaps in the lists, not to mention who is devising the lists.  I wonder what would be the favorites of those "voiceless?"

Some interesting news from around the blogosphere

The successor site to the defunct WoT fansite, wotmania, Read and Find Out, recently announced plans to change its name to "Read It And Found Out" once the fourteenth and final volume of the WoT series is released in January 2013.  According to webmaster Nebhead:

"For the past three years, we have kept alive wotmania's tradition of honoring Robert Jordan and his acclaimed Wheel of Time series, even going so far as to adopt as our website name his favorite RAFO quip to fans eager to know what ultimately happens to Bela.  But after January 2013, we all will have read it [A Memory of Light] and have found out not  just what happened to Bela, but also the fate of that chicken farmer who was introduced in the sixth volume, Lord of Chaos, but who quickly disappeared from the story.  It will be exciting times for our readers, who now will have the ultimate ammunition against those wrong-headed people who argued that LTT was three levels of power stronger than Demandred, rather than the 1.5 levels hinted at in the 2010 Q&A with Brandon Sanderson, where he slipped up and had to quickly cover his tracks with a hrmm...and a cryptic reference to Maria's notes..."

Controversial SF writer John C. Wright recently announced on his LiveJournal that he plans on attending the annual WisCon convention during the Memorial Day weekend in late May.  In typical Wright fashion, he devoted over 5,000 words to outlining the topic of his speech, tentatively titled "Radical Feminism in The Hunger Games," replete with citations from Mr. Rogers, James Joyce, Joyce Meyer, Rush Limbaugh, and Vladimir Putin, most of which were tangents from tangents that ultimately circled back around to Wright's puzzlement over why women do not necessarily want to be domestic goddesses.

Inspired by the years-running bets between Pat's Fantasy Hotlist and George R.R. Martin on the Super Bowl and whether or not the loser had to include the winner's name in an upcoming novel or review three novels chosen by the winner, Rob Bedford of SFF World and Rob's Blog O' Stuff and Caine's Law writer Matt Stover have a similar bet, except they are betting on the winner of the The Rock/John Cena main event at tonight's Wrestlemania 28 in Miami, FL.  Rob, when questioned who he picked, took his right hand and waved it in front of his face a few times before resuming his breakfast of champions, Fruity Pebbles.

Encouraged by the positive response he and other bloggers participating in the ongoing Scott Lynch re-reading/commentary threads on their blogs, blogger Bryce Dayton announced on Twitter earlier this weekend that he would be changing his blog's name from My Awful Reviews to My Somewhat Decent Reviews.  He also said that after the Lynch project was complete, that he would be busy with the sequel, organizing a group review effort of Marcel Proust.

The fallout from the Christopher Priest criticism of the Clarke Awards is still ongoing.  Last report had him and some of the Clarke Award judges arranging a series of ad hoc panel discussions for next week's EasterCon convention in the UK.  There would be a symposium on the pros and cons of internet puppies, a debate entitled "Is Sherri Tepper's In Rising Waters Truly a SF Novel?:  Yay or Neigh?," and a physics demonstration to see if the science behind Greg Bear's Hull Zero Three can be applied to internet rhetoric.

Highly respected athletes and knowledgeable climate control experts Jose Canseco and The Iron Sheik announced that they would be doing a tribute to the "late, great" Al Gore next week.  Canseco promised a follow-up to his critically acclaimed Twitter instructional series on climate change, while The Iron Sheik outlined a plan on how to make both Canseco and Gore humble "the old country way."


Stephanie Meyer announced last week on her site that she was going to write a sequel to her Twilight series where Edward and Bella's children would be fourth graders at a Washington state public school.  There may actually be two sequel books, as leaked titles include "Tales of a Fourth-Grade Vampire Nothing" and "SuperVamp."  No word yet if Edward is still in high school.

Even though "The New iPad" is already a huge seller for Apple, this has not stopped the company from developing the fourth generation of iPad tablets.  During the recent investigation of the Foxconn plants in China, an investigator turned up a mysterious set of images that seem to be linked to this rumored iPad "4."  The image may not be very clear, but it does seem to hint at a new marketing direction for Apple:

A couple of Friday morning links

Black Gate article on authors fading due to age.

Beyond the possible attempt to bait fans of George R.R. Martin, I found this article to be very flawed.  One could argue that in the case of authors who write primarily multi-volume epic fantasies is that after a stage, it is increasingly difficult to balance creativity (after all, the main exposition occurs early in such tales) and continuity.  And when one goes outside that narrow field, the premise becomes even more ridiculous.  After all, I'm typing this with a copy of Umberto Eco's Confessions of a Young Novelist, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and several of Jorge Luis Borges' collections on shelves around me.

Worst part about articles such as this is that they show the provincialism that seems to infect so many bloggers who want to sound as though they are making a profound point.  Rather than even entertaining the possibility that it might be fossilized narratives and nearly-as-ancient "fan" expectations, simple, flawed arguments such as this piece are written.


Requires Only That You Hate takes on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

Nothing really to say but those quotes really are damning, aren't they?

Three reviews that I think others ought to read

I don't link enough to other online reviewers enough these days.  It's not because I view them as "competition" (few have similar interests), but rather because I've fallen behind in keeping up with other blogs.  That being said, I've noticed in the past week that three of my favorite novels have been reviewed by two people whose taste in literature I generally respect.  So I thought I'd provide links to those reviews so others can discover some worthwhile reading without having to listen to me blather about it:

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (Empty Your Heart of Its Mortal Dream)

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (Empty Your Heart of Its Mortal Dream)

Stewart O'Nan, Songs for the Missing (Dazed Bastard)


Go forth and read these reviews, then the books (if you haven't already).

My Locus Online article, Best Heroic Fantasy of 2010, now live

Here's the link to the article.  Hopefully, this little roundup will generate some discussion in some quarters of the web, even though I don't expect many to agree with all of my choices or the rationales behind them.  Feel free to leave your thoughts here, even if it's just to berate me for leaving out Authors X, Y, or Z or including sucky authors A, B, or C.

A moving animation/song for the weekend

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Just something I was directed toward today.  Played it once without music and was moved.  Played it just now with music and was touched even more.  Thought of you as well, but not in the way that I'm thinking of the one who sent me this.  

Reason #90210 why I probably should stop reading epic fantasy forums

My IQ must have dropped 50 points or so reading this dreck.

This is a fitting example of why I really don't obsess over any work.  Lord have mercy on that person's soul for having wondered about that and also for those who actually took the time to weigh the "merits" of such a "speculation."  Those of us who read that and were completely nonplussed, like I am at the moment, we're just doomed to watch the entropic forces of the asinine overwhelm us.  Not even sure if the squirrel gods could save us now...

Before I review the new WoT, a recap of the previous twelve volumes

As I stated last week, I am not going to be posting my review of the thirteenth The Wheel of Time book, Towers of Midnight, until this weekend (possibly Friday, but maybe not until Saturday or even Sunday).  For those rare few (and new) souls that visit here who have not read my thoughts on the volumes in this series (plus a prequel), I have decided to link to all thirteen previous reviews of this oft-bloated series.

The first review I did, back in October 2009, was for the twelfth volume, The Gathering Storm.  That review followed a hasty reading of the eleventh volume, Knife of Dreams, when I was offered a review copy and the difference in tone between that and my reflective reviews of the first nine volumes (read earlier this year for the first time since 2000), the tenth (read for the first time in 2006) and eleventh (read very rapidly in October 2009 and at a more leisurely pace this spring) is palpable.  Needless to say, these aren't going to be the sort of commentaries that devout fans of the WoT series (the so-called WoTHeads) are going to enjoy.  But enough of the babbling.  Here are the links:

The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

The Dragon Reborn

The Shadow Rising

The Fires of Heaven

Lord of Chaos

A Crown of Swords

The Path of Daggers

Winter's Heart

Crossroads of Twilight

Knife of Dreams

The Gathering Storm

New Spring (prequel)


Based on these, how do you think I reacted to the just-released Towers of Twilight when I read it a couple of weeks ago?

2009 Interview I did with Brian Evenson now available in French

For those of you that can read French, you really should check out the fine translation done by Gaëtan Flacelière at the French site Fihrist of my February 2009 interview with Brian Evenson.  I often think this interview as being one of my two or three best ever and it seems some think that it is one of the best ones of Evenson.  So, if you read French, be sure to click on the link below.  And if you can't read French, the original interview is here.

Five reviews from this Labor Day weekend

Posted five reviews so far the past three days on the SFF Masterworks blog:

Poul Anderson, Three Hearts & Three Lions - I have some rather snarky things to say about this book, so you may want to click on the link above and read it for yourself.

Patricia A. McKillip, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - Mostly enjoyed this early work of hers.

Michael Moorcock, Gloriana - problematic, but ultimately a good novel.

Walter Tevis, Mockingbird - one of the saddest dystopias that I have read.  Still a very good novel.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., Dark Benediction - collection of 1950s stories that presage his classic A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Recommended.


By week's end, I hope to have reviews of Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden, and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man on this blog and Brian Aldiss' Helliconia and the two volumes of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories on the SFF Masterworks blog.  Looks like I'm well on my way to my goal of having reviewed at least half of the books in both lists by Christmas time.

Saturday morning links: It's Football Time in Tennessee!

Was busy all of Friday either working or sleeping, so time to catch up with a few matters:

First off, Jeff VanderMeer has a new NY Times Sunday Books review column that hopefully will become a regular, recurring feature.  In this column, he reviews four books, including Karen Lord's debut novel, Redemption in Indigo.  I hope to have my own review of Lord's book up by Monday night, but his review of her book, Karin Lowachee's excellent The Gaslight Dogs, and two other notable 2010 releases are well-worth the link-click.  Let me know what you think of them, as I've read three of them and want to read the fourth in the near future!

Although I had intended the "interview" questions below to be a spoof of what I consider to be "canned" questions, I see quite a few of you have taken it seriously and have provided some good insights to how and why you blog.  Here are a few that I have found so far (and please respond if you have answered these on your blog and I missed it):

Rascunhos

Dazed Rambling


Tea and Tomes


A new site launched this week during the WorldCon convention in Australia.  Cheryl Morgan's latest venture, Salon Futura, has now gone live and I have to say that I like what I've seen out of this debut effort.  It doesn't try to be the venerable Emerald Citys redux, but is something different in scope while still being quite good.  Check it out here.  And if you have an hour to spare, be sure to listen to the podcast round table discussion of international SF with Gary Wolfe, Nnedi Okorafor, and Fábio Fernandes.

And finally, last but certainly far from least, it's football time in Tennessee!  Although doubtless I'll hear it when Jeff's Gators play my beloved Vols in a couple of weeks, I'm still going to be excited whenever my alma mater begins play.  And now, eine kleine Volsmusik.

Have a good Labor Day weekend for those here in the US and just a regular good weekend for those who celebrate May Day instead. 

New site's first awards polling for best 2009-2010 fiction

Tuesday will mark the one-year anniversary since the large wotmania fansite shut down.  In the interim, a successor, more general fantasy/other writing site, Read and Find Out, sprang up.  Although I am not a moderator/administrator at that site like I was for wotmania's Other Fantasy section, I still participate there on occasion, sometimes raising a bit of hell just for the hell of it.  But this time, I'm just blogging about the site's first annual awards for fiction released in the 12 months since the site opened.  I nominated several of the books that appear on the final ballot and I think it would be interesting to see how people who read this blog would vote.

I'll list most of the entries below (I'm deleting the site-specific ones, even one that includes me, because I think it would have little interest to most reading this) and you can either register over there (it's free and takes all of about 30 seconds) and submit your responses in response to the thread linked to above, or you can just "vote" here and I'll be sure to let those in charge over there know what people chose.  It might be interesting to see if there is a difference in voting and that could be helpful for the people running the site (obviously, they don't mind me posting this, or else I would have used more faux-revolutionary language in this post about rising up and...something and something), so just vote in a Top 3 fashion and let's see what the people at this blog choose.

Oh, and you can forward this along to others as well, if you yourself want to stir up a bit of trouble, I suppose...

Voting will close at midnight RAFO time (currently British summer time, if you're not sure) on Sunday/Monday coming (that's 29/30 August, depending on how you look at things).

So here they are, the nominations for our inaugural Book & SF/F MB Awards.

You can vote for up to three books, with your first place vote counting as 3 points, second place as 2 and third place as 1. If you vote for fewer than three books, your vote is obviously counted as a first place, or first and second place, vote.


RAFO Book Awards:

* Book of the RAFO Year
Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson ~ The Gathering Storm
Jeff VanderMeer ~ Finch
A.S. Byatt ~ The Children's Book
Caitlín Kiernan ~ The Red Tree
Elizabeth Bear ~ By the Mountain Bound
Laini Taylor ~ Lips Touch: Three Times
Mike Allen, ed. ~ Clockwork Phoenix: New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness
Kristin Cashore ~ Fire
N.K. Jemisin ~ The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

* Best Fantasy
Robin Hobb ~ Dragon Haven
Jeff VanderMeer ~ Finch
Zoran Živković ~ Escher's Loops
Michal Ajvaz ~ The Golden Age
Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson ~ The Gathering Storm
Elizabeth Bear ~ By the Mountain Bound
Laini Taylor ~ Lips Touch: Three Times
Mike Allen, ed. ~ Clockwork Phoenix: New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness
Kristin Cashore ~ Fire
N.K. Jemisin ~ The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

* Best Sci-Fi
Caitlín Kiernan ~ The Red Tree
Cherie Priest ~ Boneshaker
Michal Ajvaz ~ The Other City
Elizabeth Bear ~ Chill
Paolo Bacigalupi ~ The Windup Girl

* Best Other Literature (basically, all the other genres)
AS Byatt ~ The Children's Book
Terrence Holt ~ In the Valley of the Kings (collection)
Paul Auster ~ Invisible

* Best Non-fiction
Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears
Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists/The Vertigo of Lists
Mark Bould and China Miéville (eds.), Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction

* Best author blog/twitter
Stephen Fry
Nick Harkaway
Brandon Sanderson

* Most anticipated book (as of yet unpublished)
Nick Harkaway's new book
Second volume of Stephen Fry's autobiography
Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson ~ A Memory of Light
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.) ~ The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Fictions
Catherynne M. Valente ~ Deathless
Lyda Morehouse ~ Resurrection Code
Lois McMaster Bujold ~ Cryoburn
C.S. Friedman ~ Legacy of Kings - (the conclusion to the Magister Trilogy)
Elizabeth Bear ~ The Sea Thy Mistress (conclusion to the Edda of Burdens trilogy)
Elizabeth Bear ~ Grail
N.K. Jemisin ~ Broken Kingdoms
Catherine Asaro ~ Carnelians
Janny Wurts ~ Initiate's Trial

The so-called "Third World" and SF

Over at The World in the Satin Bag, Shaun Duke recently posted about a question that a professor of his asked him, which was:

Why do you think science fiction and other "fantastic" literary forms are important in the third world?

 When I read his post, my first response was pretty much "is the term 'Third World' even applicable today when it comes to fiction, much less SF fiction?"  You can see the discussion to date in the link there.  Shaun was curious, after my own bit of curiosity what writers from countries like Brazil, an emerging economic power that used to have that 'Third World' label stuck to them, would make of such a question.  The responses on Twitter were interesting and apparently later there will be posted comments on Shaun's blog.

So, with this background provided (and knowing that how I worded it may have prejudiced some), what do you make of the professor's question?  How useful, if at all, are labels such as 'Third World' in trying to discuss trends outside of a few European, North American, and East Asian markets?  Responses both here and at Shaun's blog would be greatly appreciated.