Category: Critical Mass News

My life will be complete the day that I read in a high fantasy novel — in place of, “She felt her breasts bouncing underneath her tunic as she hurried across the courtyard” or whatever, where a female character spends the whole walk thinking about her own boobs for no reason — a male character walking across a courtyard thinking to himself, “He felt his testicles jostling in his codpiece as he hurried across the courtyard.”

“It must be cooler weather than I realized,” he thought to himself, “they’re awfully small and high up today …”

— Jim C Hines continues to experiment with gender-swapping sf/f clichés, quoted in file 770

Just for a change (OK, because no-one offered a talk!), we thought we’d try a panel discussion. So if you are turning up at Kappys for the July meeting (Wed the 6th, 7pm), be prepared to talk for five minutes on one of the following:

• The best SF I read last year
• My favourite forgotten author
• The SF book that made me a fan of the stuff.

Our calendar for the rest of the year looks a trifle sparse

• Aug:  Roman on Audio SF: audiobooks, radio dramas and podcasts;
• Sept: TBA
• Oct: TBA
• Nov: TBA
• Dec: Dinner

Those “TBA” above mean that no-one has volunteered to give a talk! If there’s no interest, we will finish the year after the August meeting. If you want to volunteer a talk, or discuss how to give a talk, contact Adam or Roman, or leave a comment here.

 

 

One of the most entertaining news bulletins from the SF world is ansible, edited by the amazing Dave Langford. It is, of course, named after the FTL communications device invented by U K LeGuin, the ansible.

Here, from the latest issue of ansible is a wonderful contribution from Ursula herself:

Ursula K. Le Guin broadens our scope: ‘I don’t know if Thog is interested in opening his Masterclass to anyone outside science fiction, let alone the writer some people call The Master. But I know he likes the more violent anatomical disjunctions and peculiarities, and humbly offer him this one, from Chapter 30 of The Awkward Age by Henry James (p.301 in the 1981 Penguin Modern Classics edition):

“‘But we have, you know, as Van says, gone to pieces’ she went on, twisting her pretty head and tossing it back over her shoulder to an auditor of whose approach to her from behind, though it was impossible she should have seen him, she had visibly, within a minute, become aware.”

‘I can’t tell you the joy this passage gave me, as by page 301 I was in danger of tossing the book back over my shoulder into a fireplace of whose location, though I might be uncertain, I had become willing to imagine, as offering me a final, if less than admirable, escape from endless thickets of clauses introducing incomprehensibly allusive conversations carried on by disagreeable people, among whom the owner of the pretty head is, perhaps, the most tedious.’ (6 May)

— ansible 347  at http://news.ansible.uk/a347.html

Earlier this year, UCLA released a report, 2016 Hollywood Diversity Report: Busine$$ As Usual?, which found that “Films with relatively diverse casts enjoyed the highest global box office receipts and the highest median return on investment.”, while shows that featured higher levels of diversity amidst their casts tended to do much better with the highly sought after demographics: “Median 18-49 view ratings (as well as median household ratings among whites, black Latinos and Asian Americans) peaked for broadcast scripted shows featuring casts that were greater than 40 percent minority.”
— Andrew Liptak, io9 “How Syfy is Leading The Charge With Imagining Diverse Futures”

Adam Jenkins is speaking at Crit Mass this Wednesday, June 1st, 7pm at Kappys.

Paul Shapera’s New Albion sequence, the first part of which was released in 2012, is a rock opera/concept album exploring the lives of the MacAlister family over multiple generations. The first album, The Dolls of New Albion, is set in a Steampunk age; the second, The New Albion Radio Hour, is an interesting rendering of Dieselpunk; and the third, The New Alibion Guide to Analogue Consciousness, completes the operatic trilogy through Atompunk.

With the late 2015 release of the final piece, now seems like a good time to explore Shapera’s work.

Winners in each category highlighted in bold yellow

Best Novel

The Dagger’s Path, Glenda Larke (Orbit)
Day Boy, Trent Jamieson (Text Publishing)
Graced, Amanda Pillar (Momentum)
Lament for the Afterlife, Lisa L. Hannett (ChiZine Publications)
Zeroes, Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, and Deborah Biancotti (Simon and Schuster)

Best Novella or Novelette

“The Cherry Crow Children of Haverny Wood”, Deborah Kalin, in Cherry Crow Children (Twelfth Planet Press)
“Fake Geek Girl”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Review of Australian Fiction, volume 14, issue 4 (Review of Australian Fiction)
“Hot Rods”, Cat Sparks, in Lightspeed Science Fiction & Fantasy 58 (Lightspeed Science Fiction & Fantasy)
“The Miseducation of Mara Lys”, Deborah Kalin, in Cherry Crow Children (Twelfth Planet Press)
“Of Sorrow and Such”, Angela Slatter, in Of Sorrow and Such (Tor.com)
“The Wages of Honey”, Deborah Kalin, in Cherry Crow Children (Twelfth Planet Press)

Best Short Story

“2B”, Joanne Anderton, in Insert Title Here (FableCroft Publishing)
“The Chart of the Vagrant Mariner”, Alan Baxter, in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2015 (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
“A Hedge of Yellow Roses”, Kathleen Jennings, in Hear Me Roar (Ticonderoga Publications)
“Look how cold my hands are”, Deborah Biancotti, in Cranky Ladies of History (FableCroft Publishing)

Best Collected Work

Bloodlines, Amanda Pillar (Ticonderoga Publications)
Cherry Crow Children, Deborah Kalin, edited by Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Cranky Ladies of History, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely (FableCroft Publishing)
Letters to Tiptree, Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
Peripheral Visions: The Collected Ghost Stories by Robert Hood (IFWG Publishing Australia)

Best Artwork

Cover art, Rovina Cai, for “Tom, Thom” (Tor.com)
Cover art, Kathleen Jennings, for Bloodlines (Ticonderoga Publications)
Cover and internal artwork, Kathleen Jennings, for Cranky Ladies of History (FableCroft Publishing)
Cover, Shauna O’Meara, for The Never Never Land (CSFG Publishing)
Illustrations, Shaun Tan, for The Singing Bones (Allen & Unwin)

Best Fan Publication in any Medium

The Angriest, Grant Watson
The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
Galactic Suburbia, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts
SF Commentary, Bruce Gillespie
The Writer and the Critic, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond

Best Fan Writer

Tsana Dolichva, for body of work, including reviews and interviews in Tsana’s Reads and Reviews
Foz Meadows, for body of work, including reviews in Shattersnipe: Malcontent & Rainbows
Ian Mond, for body of work, including The Hysterical Hamster
Alexandra Pierce, for body of work, including reviews in Randomly Yours, Alex
Katharine Stubbs, for body of work, including Venture Adlaxre
Grant Watson, for body of work, including reviews in The Angriest

Best Fan Artist

Kathleen Jennings, for body of work, including Illustration Friday
Belinda Morris, for body of work, including Belinda Illustrates

Best New Talent

Rivqa Rafael
T. R. Napper
D. K. Mok
Liz Barr

William Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review

Letters to Tiptree, Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein (Twelfth Planet Press)
The Rereading the Empire Trilogy review series, Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Reviewing New Who series, David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely
“Sara Kingdom dies at the end”, Tansy Rayner Roberts in Companion Piece (Mad Norwegian Press)
“SF Women of the 20th Century”, Tansy Rayner Roberts
Squeeing over Supergirl, David McDonald and Tehani Wessely series

Nick is our guest speaker for the May Critical Mass (7pm at Kappys, Wednesday 4th May). He’s going to talk about his first novel, The Curse of Kereves Dere,  and perhaps provide a few hints about electronic publishing.

“The magic of Old Scotland was a very different matter to hers, a thing of fairies and diabolic pacts, chaining its practitioners to ruinous powers she had no intention of dealing with. her magic was book magic, an outgrowth of the natural philosophy that had made her such a prodigy as a doctor, able to cure all ills and almost raise the dead. Hers was the magic of an age of reason: of alchemy and philosophy and the clear light of day, not the smoke and cobwebs of the past’s dark night.” — Even in the Cannon’s Mouth, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Five excellent authors play with the characters from Shakespeare, sometimes crossing plays and centuries in the process. An interesting modern take on the Bard’s tales.