Category: Critical Mass News

The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards has been running since 2018. Created by a group of enthusiastic and dedicated science fiction, fantasy, horror, and speculative fiction readers, it celebrates the best in genre fiction every year, while acknowledging the subjectivity of our choices. Any traditionally published work may be nominated, but the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards aim to look beyond bestsellers and major publishers to champion titles written by marginalised authors and/or published by independent presses.

https://subjectivechaoskindofawards.wordpress.com/

The nominees for 2022

Fantasy

Lucy Holland, Sistersong
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, The House of Rust
Tasha Suri, The Jasmine Throne
C.L. Clark, The Unbroken
Zoraida Córdova, The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun
A.C. Wise, Wendy, Darling
Laure Eve, Blackheart Knights
P. Djèlí Clark, A Master of Djinn

Science Fiction

Tade Thompson, Far from the Light of Heaven
Calvin Kalsuke, Several People are Typing
Nicole Kornher-Stace, Firebreak
Claire North, Notes from the Burning Age
Catriona Silvey, Meet Me in Another Life
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth
Brent A. Harris, Alyx: An AI’s Guide to Love and Murder
Benjamin Rosenbaum, The Unravelling
Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

More Categories at https://subjectivechaoskindofawards.wordpress.com/2022-2/

The finalists will be selected in July and winners announced in September (chaos notwithstanding).

The 2021 edition of Some of the Best From Tor.com is now available! The anthology features twenty-four of our favourite original stories published on the site in the past year.

Some of the Best of Tor.com, 2021 — Table of Contents

• “Masquerade Season” by ‘Pemi Aguda
• “The Lay of Lilyfinger” by G. V. Anderson
• “The Red Mother” by Elizabeth Bear
• “The Tinder Box” by Kate Elliott
• “Questions Asked in the Belly of the World” by Aliza Greenblatt
• Black Leg by Glen Hirshberg
• “The Wonderful Stag, or The Courtship of Red Elsie” by Kathleen Jennings
• “Blood in the Thread” by Cheri Kamei
• “Sand” by Jasmin Kirkbride
• “Now We Paint Worlds” by Matthew Kressel
• “#Spring Love, #Pichal Pairi” by Usman T. Malik
• “Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller
• “#Selfcare” by Annalee Newitz
• “The Far Side of the Universe” by noc
• “A Better Way of Saying” by Sarah Pinsker
• “Baby Teeth” by Daniel Polansky
• “The Future Library” by Peng Shepherd
• “Aptitude” by Cooper Shrivastava
• “Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels” by Lavie Tidhar
• “L’Esprit de L’Escalier” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “An Easy Job” by Carrie Vaughn
• “Small Monsters” by E. Lily Yu

Murray writes

The 2 February meeting of the Nova Mob will be held by Zoom due to too much COVID active in the community. The Kensington Town Hall will be closed: there will not be any face-to-face meeting.

Iain McIntyre’s Dangerous Visions and New Worlds event is postponed to April. The delay will allow the event to be face to face and gives time for copies of the book to arrive in the country.

February’s meeting has 3 parts:

• The year’s topics: what would you like to speak on in 2022, and do you want your event by Zoom or face to face?
• Acknowledgement of the late Bill Wright.
• Hindsight: your science fictional recommendation from 2021. A Nova Mob round-robin discussion.

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Vale Bill Wright

Farewell to a steadfast friend of fandom

On 16 January Bill Wright died at the Alfred Hospital after a bad fall the previous week which had resulted in his hospitalisation. He was a day short of his 85^th birthday. 

Few people are as heavily intertwined with the history of Melbourne science fiction fandom as Bill Wright. A Life Member of the Melbourne Science Fiction Club; member and contributor to Anzapa with his regular zine Interstellar Ramjet Scoop; member of the Nova Mob for decades; member of the ASFF; enthusiastic convention-goer; fan ambassador; Bill’s legacy also includes among other things the Bill Wright archive of Australian fanzines; the Meteor concept for a Melbourne slanshack; and notably the Norma Hemming Award which he instigated. Many will recall his impish humour and his pleasure at conversation. This is a sad loss.

Reported by Elaine Cochrane, who also mentioned that about two hundred messages have been received to Bruce Gillespie’s Facebook posting, and that “he remained Bill till the end.”

Bill will be acknowledged at our February 2022 meeting of the Nova Mob.

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Nova Mob 2022 topics

You may not have a novel in you so maybe talk about someone else’s.

We have four items on the 2022 calendar, for February, March, April, and November respectively. The months of May, June, July, August, September, and October are available. Do you want to claim one of those months for your topic? Let it be known at February’s meeting.

The Clarke Awards look to have permanently shifted to a late September announcement, which means we could devote the September meeting to wrangling the Clarkes.

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February meeting: Hindsight: your science fictional recommendation from 2021.

What book/film/podcast etc would you commend to others from your 2021?

A Nova Mob round-robin discussion by Zoom.

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Wednesday 2 February

8.00pm – 9.30 pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time
7.30pm – 9.00pm Adelaide time
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Passcode: nova

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

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Calendar

Mar 2 2022 Nova Mob – Perry Middlemiss on Short SF in 1965.

Apr 5 2022 Nova Mob – Iain McIntyre – Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985 by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre.

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Joel Coen chose to take this on as a solo project, without his usual partner Ethan, and he adapted the play himself. What he chose to do in this adaptation was mine every vein of horror in the play, no matter how tiny, to create a movie about a curse grinding someone down to powder.
[…]
Denzel Washington is goddamn incandescent as Macbeth. I mean, I expected him to be good, he’s Denzel Washington—but this trampled all over my expectations. He begins the story as a man already maybe a little too curious about finding an easy path to glory, but also prone to an excellent sardonic wit. Watching him wring himself inside out with paranoia and guilt is simply beautiful. And the best part, for me, is that his Macbeth becomes more compelling as his crimes pile up. Rather than becoming increasingly paranoid and defeated, Washington’s Macbeth becomes increasingly paranoid and powerful, seeming to gain strength from knowing that everyone has turned on him.

read the full review at tor.com: Life’s But an Existentialist Shadow in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth by Leah Schnelbach

The books and film describe a planet with unforgiving sun and desolate wastelands of sand and rock. However, as you move closer to the polar regions towards the cities of Arrakeen and Carthag, the climate in the book begins to change into something that might be inferred as more hospitable.
Yet our model tells a different story. In our model of Arrakis, the warmest months in the tropics hit around 45°C, whereas in the coldest months they do not drop below 15°C. Similar to that of Earth. The most extreme temperatures would actually occur in the mid-latitudes and polar regions. Here summer can be as hot as 70°C on the sand (also suggested in the book). Winters are just as extreme, as low as -40°C in the mid-latitudes and down to -75°C in the poles.
[…]
The mid-latitudes, where most people on Arrakis live, are actually the most dangerous in terms of heat. In the lowlands, monthly average temperatures are often above 50-60°C, with maximum daily temperatures even higher. Such temperatures are deadly for humans.

“Dune: we simulated the desert planet of Arrakis to see if humans could survive there“, a piece by Alex Farnsworth Senior Research Associate in Meteorology, University of Bristol;
Michael Farnsworth Research Lead Future Electrical Machines Manufacturing Hub, University of Sheffield; and Sebastian Steinig Research Associate in Paleoclimate Modelling, University of Bristol, published in The Conversation

Iain McIntyre talks about the new book edited with Andrew Nette:

“Dangerous Visions and New Worlds offers a birds eye view of a period when we were most passionate—about literature, the arts and the sciences, and when we let the rockets explore the universe while we turned to explore the multiverse in terms of the human psyche. Powered by a faith that fiction—especially speculative fiction—could change the world—the New Wave allied with the Underground Press, the Left and the world of rock and roll to create a cultural explosion. This book recalls the highly individualistic writers, with often radically different approaches.”

—Michael Moorcock

https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1201

At the March 2nd Nova Mob, Perry Middlemiss will be looking at the short fiction from 1965.

This trailer has something for every Expanse fan: Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) plotting; Bobbie (Frankie Adams) being breathtakingly competent; the Roci maneuvering; Holden (Steven Strait) being captainly; Amos (Wes Chatham) being soft and also tough; Naomi (Dominique Tipper) putting things together; Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) being a schemer; Drummer (Cara Gee) growing into her role as leader; and a whole lot of space action.

The Latest Trailer for The Expanse’s Final Season Looks for a Reason to Hope, tor.com