The Kickstarter campaign for Castles in Spain, the anthology of translated Spanish science fiction and fantasy has entered its final week. They are 94% funded, and have 4 days to go. I’m sure we can make that.
Also they put a new campaign update online today, which happens to be written by me. To find out what I had to say, click here.
Inevitably, this being “World” Book Day in the UK and Ireland, some bright spark in the media thought this would be a good time to do some more controversy farming on the subject of ebooks. Stepping up to the plate as designated outrage merchant is Fay Weldon, who opined in The Independent that authors should write specially dumbed down versions of their books for release as ebooks because people who read such things can’t be expected to be as intelligent as those who read paper.
Yes, well. The less said about that the better. However, I do have an ebook that I want to bring to your attention, because it makes brilliant use of the format.
I have not seen a physical copy of the new 3rd Edition of The Anime Encyclopedia, but I expect it to be huge because Amazon tells me that it is 1160 pages. They don’t give a weight, but it is 9.2″ tall and 2.5″ thick. Reading it in bed would probably give you a wrist injury. In any case, the price of the paper edition is over $80 (though it may be cheaper in the USA as I’m probably getting stung for VAT). In contrast the Kindle edition is a bargain at under $18, and is in some ways a much better book.
Why? Because it is cross-referenced with hyperlinks. So if you go to the section on Sailor Moon you will find links to everything from other works by Naoko Takeuchi to the inevitable erotic parody of the series (Venus Five, for those of you sufficiently desperate to go and look for it). General entries such as “Science Fiction” or “Wartime Anime” inevitably contain heaps of links. As someone who has edited ebooks, I am well aware of the vast amount of work involved in producing something like this, and am delighted to see it has been done.
Of course both books contain the fabulously erudite and often cutting text provided by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements. I naturally headed straight for the Sailor Moon entry to see what they had to say about the initial US releases. I was not disappointed:
With reincarnation a given, the show is unafraid of death; the first season closes with a harrowing assault on the icy lair of the evil Queen Beryl, in which the entire cast is killed off (albeit temporarily). Needless to say, the sanitized U.S. release unconvincingly pretends they have merely been detained elsewhere.
You can spend ages just flicking through the book and following links. I’m by no means qualified to judge the content, but I know Helen and Jonathan and have great respect for their knowledge.
I am also reminded that I really need to get a copy of Wandering Son, one of the few animes to actually address the issue of real trans people rather than using gender-swapping as a plot device or joke. (I am likely to thump the next person who tells me that Ranma 1/2 is a story about a trans kid.) The entry for Wandering Son is very positive from the artistic point of view, and when it comes to the subject matter McCarthy & Clements say:
This is a magical series, one of very few to address the issues facing transgender or gender-conflicted children with the respect and love they deserve, but so rarely find.
Yeah, if you have any interest in anime, buy this book in electronic form. It is a bargain for all sorts of reasons.
I have another set of BristolCon Fringe podcasts uploaded for you. Both readings are from forthcoming books, so this is an ideal opportunity to try before you buy.
First up we have Pete Newman reading from The Vagrant, forthcoming in the UK from Harper Voyager on April 23rd. Pete will be at Forbidden Planet in London on the 23rd, and in Bristol on the 30th. In the blub on Podbean I described the book as “science-fictional-post-demon-apocalypse” which pretty much sums it up. It certainly sounds very interesting.
Emma’s reading is from Planetfall, which is due out in the USA from Ace/Roc in November. It has an amazing cover (see above), which is even more amazing after you have heard Emma talk about it. I’m really excited about the book too. The chapters that Emma read totally got me hooked. Do I need to rant about the fact that Emma doesn’t have a UK publisher for it? You know the script by now, don’t you: “woman writing science fiction, no one in the UK will buy it”. *sigh*
Finally we have the Q&A, which focuses mainly on the issue of having two writers in the house. Do they kill each other? In fiction, in podcasts, or in real life? Honestly, people, would you marry a writer, knowing how neurotic they are?
I should add that Emma has recently had a recurrence of the health problems that plagued her last year. Further surgery will be required. Thankfully the NHS will cover the costs, but Emma’s earning ability will be seriously curtailed. This might be a very good time to support the Tea & Jeopardy podcast via Patreon. It is a very silly thing, and therefore needs to be continued.
The latest release from Wizard’s Tower, The Assassin’s Edge by Juliet E. McKenna, is now available in the major online stores. Links here.
I’d like to say it is in our store too, but of course the VAT nonsense has put an end to that. I’d also like to say that, as we now have all five volumes of the Tales of Einarinn series available, we’ll be doing an omnibus edition. However, Amazon royalties are stupidly low on books priced over $9.99 so it is not economic for us to do so. If only we could sell through our own store…
Juliet will be blogging about the book eventually, but she’s busy bending the ears of the Great & Good at the moment so it won’t be for a few days.
Yesterday I made my way into Bristol to help out at an event organized by the Bristol Festival of Literature. It was the launch, at Foyles, of The Ship, a debut novel by Antonia Honeywell. Given that the book is clearly dystopian, my friend Pete Sutton asked me if I would be willing to host the event and interview Antonia. I am delighted to say that it all went very well. Antonia coped superbly with her first public author event, and we got a decent crowd who asked good questions. I have now written a review of The Ship, and you can read it here. The short version is that it is more allegory than science fiction, but very interesting all the same.
No Valentine’s cards managed to follow me to Manchester, but thanks to Jonathan Howard on Twitter I have found this review of Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion. I believe that this is the first time anyone has said anything nice about my fiction in a book review. Thank you, Mr. Gibb.
I’m in Manchester, doing LGBT History, but I have nothing much to do tonight so I have settled into my hotel room and got a book review online. It is for Karen Memory, the new novel by Elizabeth Bear. Mostly I loved it. I do have some gripes about how the trans character was handled, but that won’t affect most readers. You can find the review here. Read it, then go buy the book.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a project at Bristol University that is studying reader opinions of translated fiction, and how such fiction, in particular from smaller European countries, can better be promoted. Last night I headed into Bath for a workshop being jointly run by the project team and my friends at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights.
From my point of view the most interesting part of the evening was the panel discussion with three people heavily involved in selling translated books.
First up was Simon Winder of Penguin. He was clearly still very much in the old-fashioned cottage industry type of publishing business, not the ruthless, marketing-driven thing we are used to with mass market fiction. From that point of view, although he is from a big company, he’s much more like a small press. He can publish books just because they are interesting.
The main thing that I latched onto from his talk was a book he is publishing this month called Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange. Here’s the blurb:
A great cache of ancient, magical stories in the same tradition as The Arabian Nights, Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange is an extraordinary find. Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest-known Arabic short stories, which survived in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights, but most have never been read in English before.
These stories are believed to date from the 9th Century, a time when England was being merrily overrun by viking hordes. I’m really looking forward to this book.
Later in the year Penguin are doing a new edition of 2000 Leagues Under The Sea. Simon told me that it is a new translation, not the crappy original one that removed all of the rude comments about the English, favorable mentions of Socialism and so on.
Something else that Simon had to promote was a new range of “short classics” published to mark the 80th anniversary of the Penguin Classics range. These are chapbooks coming in at 64 pages. Some are complete stories, others self-contained extracts from longer works. They will be priced at 80p each, and Penguin doubtless hopes that lots of people will take the “gotta catch ’em all” view of the series. I picked up a Poe story, The Tell-Tale Heart, from the pile he was giving away, and will doubtless buy a few others, including Sinbad the Sailor and Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market. It is a nice idea, though I’m disappointed to count only 10 obviously female names in the list of 80 titles (there may be more — I’m not familiar with all of the non-European writers). Penguin will doubtless say that the gender balance reflects their Classics range, but I think they could have tried harder.
The second speaker was Nic Bottomley, the owner of Mr. B’s. The most notable thing in his talk was the revelation of how well his store is able to sell translations. Of course they are a niche business, but they are trading off in-depth knowledge. People come to them for recommendations, and in the “more like this but different” stakes there’s nothing better to trigger the “wow, never heard of that!” response than a translation. Their best selling book of last year was a translation.
Finally we had Stephanie Seegmuller of Pushkin Press, a company which only publishes translations. I glowed with pride when she talked happily about the “most bonkers” book they have ever published. It is, of course, Finnish. Take a bow, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen. Everyone else go buy The Rabbit Back Literature Society.
There was some discussion afterwards. I’m not sure if it produced anything useful. The audience was very self-selected, and many of them were translators. I suspect I was the only publisher there besides Simon and Stephanie. We did agree, however, that the Finns are awesome, and promote their writers very effectively.
I gave away a couple of copies of The Finnish Weird. Hopefully something will come of that.
I have a new book review online. This one is of Karen Lord’s The Galaxy Game. It is a lovely book, but very subtle so I am sure that I have missed things about it. My apologies about that in advance. You can find the review here. It does contain mild spoilers for The Best of All Possible Worlds, but you really need to read that first anyway.
I have email advertising the opening of submissions for, A Galaxy of Starfish, an anthology of modern surrealism. This is a new venture by Andrew Hook whom some of you may remember as running Elastic Press back in the Emerald City days. He did some very interesting anthologies then, and I’m delighted to see him publishing again.
The submission guidelines are here. I see that they are looking for poetry, prose, art and even photographs as well as fiction. The pay rate is lousy, but hey, new company. And there aren’t a lot of markets for surrealism.
This evening was the first meeting of the year of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club run by Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. The book for this month was Mythago Wood, which has always been a favorite of mine.
First up I am pleased to report that the book has not been visited by the Suck Fairy. Despite the fact that I have read all of the books in the Mythago series, and therefore know more than it is healthy to know about Ryhope Wood, the book still worked for me. I still love the idea of Mythic Imagos, and I love Rob’s evocation of the Wildwood.
Also most of the group enjoyed the book too. That’s always a big relief where a book you really like and have enthused about is concerned.
Of course not everyone liked it. As I rather expected, some of the women in the group had difficulty with the Huxleys. It is absolutely true that they are all assholes in varying degrees, and Guiwenneth is their fantasy woman. She’s not real, she’s a Mythago. The only real woman in the book is poor Jennifer, who understandably is unable to cope with competition from an archetypal object of male lust. Horrible people, those Huxleys, but totally believable.
I’ll also accept that the ending is a bit silly. The oak leaf thing is the sort of daft tragedy that would happen in a Celtic myth. It is still daft.
What did surprise me was that a couple of people found the book slow and unengaging. Part of this is, I think, because it doesn’t have much of a plot. The thing that keeps you going through the early part of the book is the mystery of Ryhope Wood itself. If that doesn’t grab you then you have a problem. Of course I think it should grab you, but it seems that it doesn’t work for younger people in the same way it does for me.
The reason for that appears to be that many people younger than me haven’t read any theosophy, haven’t read Carlos Casteneda, haven’t had late night university conversations about ley lines, and so on. The particular mix of science and mysticism on which Mythago Wood is founded makes no sense to them. I guess that dates the book, which is sad. But an interesting discovery all the same.
The book for February is The City and The City, but sadly the group meeting is on the same night as I am doing an event at Bristol University. Hopefully someone will tell me how it goes.
I have received a press release about the 4th volume of the Apex Book of World SF. This one will be edited by Mahvesh Murad who is from from Karachi in Pakistan. Lavie Tidhar is staying on as series editor. Mahvesh already has a fine reputation online, mainly as a reviewer and podcaster. I’m sure she’ll do a great job.
We don’t have a full ToC yet, but the following authors are definitely signed up: S.P. Somtow, Kaaron Warren, Aliette de Bodard, Zoran Živković, Lauren Beukes, Hannu Rajaniemi, Nnedi Okorafor, Andrzej Sapkowski, Karin Tidbeck. That sounds absolutely awesome to me. I’m looking forward to the book.
Well, not precisely. Castles in Spain is the name of a new anthology, currently being crowdfunded, that will feature English language translations (and the original Spanish*) of some of the very best of Spanish science fiction, fantasy and horror. It is being edited by Mariano Villareal, who is responsible for the Terra Nova series of anthologies, and the translation team is being headed by Sue Burke. I’ve met Sue at conventions before. She’s a very fine translator and I’m sure that she and Mariano will do a brilliant job.
The current contents list is mainly male, but that’s because Spanish SF&F, like most other countries, has been fairly male-dominated in the past. There are stretch goals for additional stories, and hopefully these will allow Mariano and Sue to add more women writers to the book.
Of course for that to happen we all need to back the campaign. You can do so here.
By the way, the Spanish language title of the book is Castillos en el aire, which of course translates as Castles in the Air. I think I prefer that, though I am now earwormed by Don McLean.
* Paper copies appear to be English or Spanish only, but the ebooks will be bilingual.
Here I am channeling my internal Ben Grimm. Or possibly my internal Drax. Whatever, it is time to destroy science fiction again. This time we are doing it with glitter.
Yes, as you may have noticed from Twitter, the Queers Destroy Science Fiction Kickstarter campaign launched yesterday. In under 24 hours it not only fully funded, it blew through its first stretch goal. There are still 31 days to go, but that’s OK because there are more stretch goals to come. These include funding the companion Queers Destroy Horror and Queers Destroy Fantasy titles. Destruction is good, right?
Why do we need this? Well the first personal essay is up on the campaign page. It is by Michael Damian Thomas who quotes from a 1-star Amazon review of his Queers Dig Time Lords anthology:
“Just another attempt to gain civilizations approval of their flawed agenda. What does LGBTQ have to do with Sci-Fi and Doctor Who and what is there to celebrate? Kinda desperate to me….â€
What does LGBTQ have to do with Doctor Who? Oh, that poor, hopelessly sheltered little dudebro. He has no idea. I think we have a duty to educate, don’t you?
In case you need further encouragement, here’s Mark Oshiro:
This evening I was in Bristol for the launch of the third and final volume of Gareth L. Powell’s Ack-Ack Macaque trilogy, Macaque Attack. As promised in his bet with Twitter, Gareth turned up dressed as his hero. Here is the proof.
https://twitter.com/CherylMorgan/status/555786851718799360
Given that Ack-Ack was present, quite a few of us asked him to sign the book rather than Gareth. He has the hang of writing these days. In my book he wrote, “Arse! Fuck! Poop!”. That seems entirely appropriate.
There were, of course, bananas. Also Pat Hawkes-Reed’s banana bread was spectacular. Sadly there was no rum, though most people did go to the pub afterwards.
If you’d like to see some more photos of the event, check out Gareth’s Twitter feed where there is likely to be monkey madness for the next week or so.
The nominees for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award have been announced. They are as follows:
Two of those books featured in my Review of the Year post at Aqueduct Press.
Emmi Itäranta’s Memory of Water is a great little book provided that, as a science fiction reader, you can get over the fact that a world that is desperately short of fresh water has forgotten all about desalination technology. I’d recommend it to anyone but the most hardcore SF types.
The other book I have read is Elysium, which I actually had a review almost finished for. So I have finished it and posted it, here. The short version is that it is a really exciting, and innovative work, slightly marred by a horrible negative stereotype of a trans character.
I’m sure that Jonathan Strahan’s book is really good too. It has an amazing Table of Contents. The others I know less about, and will have to look them up. The PKD is a really good award from that point of view because, by focusing on paperback-first publications, it often catches books that the publishers are not pushing hard and we don’t hear much about.
With apologies for the delay, I have finally got my review of the new Roz Kaveney novel online. Resurrections is the third in the Rhapsody of Blood series, which manages to be a whole lot of fun and very erudite at the same time. I’m really enjoying these books. You can find the review here.
Lots of people are posting lists of books they are looking forward to in 2015. I thought I’d have a go too. Here are some planned new releases that I want to read.
* Actually I read this when it came out in New Zealand at the end of 2013. It is brilliant, though deeply disturbing. Highly recommended.
Obviously that’s not a complete list. Not every publisher submits their forthcoming books to Locus, and I haven’t spent a lot of time researching the list. However, the point remains: diversity, it is not hard, why aren’t you doing it?
OK, so I spent part of Christmas reading a book about sex. It was interesting.
Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, by Hanne Blank, does exactly what it says on the cover. It looks at the history of the phenomenon that we understand as heterosexuality, and how that concept has changed in nature over the years. You can read my review here.
It being that time of year, my traditional Year in Review post is up at the Aqueduct Press blog. You can read it here. Hopefully it will make up a little for how little I have managed to review this year.