The Adelaide Fan Review

Next year, Saga Press will publish all six of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea novels in one volume, to mark the 50th anniversary of the fantasy series. The Books of Earthsea will be the first fully illustrated edition, with the cover and both colour and black-and-white interior illustrations (including chapter headings, full-page illustrations, and smaller pictures) by Charles Vess. On her blog (http://ursulakleguin.com/Blog2016.html#116BBEarthsea) Ursula K LeGuin reveals that she’s excited about working with Charles Vess, but a little nervous when Charles sends her a preliminary sketch of a dragon:

It is an excellent dragon. But it isn’t an Earthsea dragon.

Why?

Well . . . an Earthsea dragon wouldn’t have this, see? but it would have that . . . And the tail isn’t exactly right, and about those bristly things —

So I send Charles an email full of whines and niggles and what-if-you-trieds-such-and-suches. I realize how inadequate are my attempts to describe in words the fierce and beautiful being I see so clearly.

Brief pause.

The dragon reappears. Now it looks more like an Earthsea dragon.

But still, it wouldn’t have this here, but it would have something there . . . And about its eye . . . And about those bristly things, you know, don’t they make it very male? and dragon gender is really mysterious . . . .

And so on — more nitpicking, more whimpering, more what-ifs and inadequate efforts to describe.

Patient as Job, grimy with graphite, Charles responds with further dragons, ever more graceful and powerful, ever closer to my heart’s desire . . . and his too, I hope.

Vess has published some sketches on his facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/charles.vess.71/media_set?set=a.10154311507649715.1073741965.623344714&type=3&pnref=story, including the wrap-around cover

Storybundle has a special offer on an historical fantasy collection curated by Melissa Scott.

In this collection I’ve been able to bring together an extraordinary group of writers who draw their inspiration from Western history, in periods from Ancient Egypt through the Second World War. There are classics like the World Fantasy Award-nominated Lord of the Two Lands and the Nebula-nominated Death of the Necromancer, and newer novels like Daughter of Mystery and The Emperor’s Agent— and Stag and Hound, just released in April. What these novels have in common, across these very different periods, is a depth to and delight in their worlds, in the precise detail and pitch-perfect moment that not only propels the story, but makes it utterly, dazzlingly real.
— Melissa Scott in her introduction to the bundle

Perhaps my favourite (not just for the title) is Geonn Cannon’s The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone. Just consider this excerpt:

In London’s alleys and byways she learned how to steal, how to fight, how to use magic, and how to avoid being detected by the police. Her hands were quick, her mind quicker, and she quickly started earning her keep with the other thieves and hoodlums occupying London’s demimonde.

Her life changed the day she noticed Dorothy Boone out for a stroll. She was walking briskly, her clothes indicating a modest salary but there was no denying she was wealthy. Her shabbiness was far too contrived to be real, and she wore a pocket watch that anyone truly destitute would have pawned ages ago. Beatrice followed at a safe distance until she discovered the woman’s residence. She waited until Dorothy left again, then found a way inside.

It was the mother lode. Even before she discovered the armory, before she even knew there was a second or third wing to the home, she was trying to figure out which antiques she could carry away and which she would have to come back for later. She sincerely hoped there would be a later. Artifacts, artwork, an array of gewgaws she couldn’t begin to identify… Part of her feared that the things she saw were invaluable, which would be useless if she couldn’t find someone willing to buy them from her.

She was still doing reconnaissance when she picked up what looked like an ordinary stone tablet to see what was inscribed on the face of it. Her lips formed the unusual words carved on the face of it as she tried to make sense of it. It was a moment before she realized her arms had become unusually stiff, and her body had acquired a new weight that made her feel anchored to the floor. She managed to unfold her arms to put the tablet down, but the damage had already been done. Her legs wouldn’t move her farther than a few steps, and her hands froze on the way up so she could see the gray stone spreading across her flesh.

The bundle is available until August 10th or thereabouts.

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.