One of the things we decided to do at BristolCon this year was record as many panels as possible and make them available as podcasts throughout the year. I’m pleased to report that the first one is now available. It is a recording of the game show panel, “Battle of the Books”. Warning: contains me. Also Paul Cornell and John Meaney. And some absolutely fabulous incidental music from Talis Kimberley. Go listen here, or search for “BristolCon” on iTunes.
Podcasts
Weird Fiction Review
The indefatigable Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have launched a new online magazine, Weird Fiction Review. It appears from the first issue that it will contain non-fiction, fiction, art, even a webcomic. This month’s fiction is a Belgian story newly translated by the excellent Edward Gauvin.
This is, of course, all tied up with the mindbogglingly huge anthology, The Weird, that Ann and Jeff have just produced. 750,000 words of fiction from all over the world, including some stunning new translations. At the speed I’m reading these days it would take me several months to get through it.
If you’d like to learn more about the book, and about Ann’s departure from Weird Tales, there is a fascinating podcast interview with the VanderMeers on Tony C. Smith’s Sofanauts show.
New Podcast: The Encyclopedia of SF
Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Graham Sleight about the new third edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction which is due to be launched any day now. Graham is the business manager for the enterprise. The encyclopedia is being written primarily by John Clute, David Langford and Peter Nicholls, with a large number of guest specialist contributors.
The official website of the new encyclopedia is here. There is also a working website here with sample entries and the contact form by which the editors can be contacted.
The encyclopedia blog, which Graham mentions in the interview, can be found here.
The new encyclopedia is part of the Gollancz SF Gateway project, which is online here.
The podcast will appear on the Salon Futura iTunes feed once the Apple people get around to processing it. In the meantime it is available here, or you can download the mp3 from this link.
Mr. B’s On Radio 4
Yesterday evening the Radio 4 arts programme, Front Row, did a feature on the fabulous Mr. B’s Emporioum of Reading Delights bookstore in Bath. The programme centers primarily on the Bookshop Band and the songs they have written for the evening readings. It also includes comments from Patrick Ness.
The programme is available via the Listen Again service. The section on Mr. B’s begins at around 21 minutes in. That will be up for a week. There’s also a highlights podcast of each week’s shows, but I don’t know if Mr. B’s made it into that. Many thanks to Sarrenah for the tip-off about this.
I popped into the store today while I was in Bath to check on the details. They were understandably very happy, and hugely grateful to Patrick who was apparently instrumental in making the feature happen.
Of course I had to buy a book, and I was pleased to spot the latest volume of Malcolm Pryce’s spoof noir mysteries set in Aberystwyth. I reviewed the first volume, Aberystwyth, Mon Amour, in Emerald City. The latest volume has an SF theme. It is called The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, and in it Louie Knight has to discover whether the supposedly long-hanged gangster, Iestyn Probert, is indeed dead, has managed to escape justice or, as local rumor has it, was abducted by aliens. I’m looking forward to it.
Also while I was in the store a young man came in to pick up a book he had ordered: Triplanetary by E.E. Doc Smith. I told him about BristolCon. I see that a membership has come in this afternoon. I love it when things like that happen.
Gaiman v Mullan – Smackdown?
As many of you will know, Neil Gaiman has been attending the Edinburgh Book Festival. As part of the entertainment he was interviewed on stage by the critic, John Mullan, who has something of a track record of looking down his nose at SF&F. The event was podcast by The Guardian. How did it go?
I was amused at the beginning to hear Claire Armistead introduce Neil as someone who had become very popular in the USA, as if it was necessary to excuse featuring a writer who was unknown here in the UK. However, Mullan very wisely stuck to letting Neil talk, which is something Neil does very well. There is one section in the middle where Neil talks about the relationship between fantasy and reality, but unless the podcast has been cleverly edited it doesn’t appear to have been in response to an attack from Mullan.
If you listen to the podcast you can hear Neil talk about the origins of American Gods, and about his hopes for the planned TV series. He does not mention that the book won a Hugo, or how he reacted at the time, which is probably just as well. In addition he talks about which writer he thinks wrote rather too much, and which one he wishes would write more. Enjoy.
Eurocon Report and Gender Panel Podcast
I have (finally, sorry folks) managed to get my report on this year’s Eurocon posted. You can read it, and see the photos, here.
The main reason for the delay is that I wanted to finish the podcast of the gender panel. This featured Kari Sperring (moderator), Ian McDonald, Elizabeth Bear, Johan Jönsson, Kristina Knaving and myself, and I thought it went very well. It should be on the Salon Futura iTunes feed fairly soon, but in the meantime you can listen to it here, or download it.
My thanks once again to Carolina and her team for a great convention, and for allowing me to have the audio recording from the panel.
Out of the Mists
There’s an interesting discussion in the latest Coode Street Podcast in which Gary tosses out the idea that Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley is something of an ur text as regards feminist fantasy. I’ve been dredging my memory of books I read in the 1980s. Patricia McKillip and Elizabeth A. Lynn were both writing at the time, but I suspect that Gary is right in suggesting that Mists of Avalon had an enormous influence on the field. I also suspect that Dungeons & Dragons played its part, because the book was dropped into a market full of women role-players desperate for something to show how they might participate more fully in cod-medieval societies.
As with Gary and Jonathan, I have put no great thought into this. Feel free to tell us how wrong we are in comments.
China Starts the Week
On Monday China Miéville was one of the four guests on Radio 4’s Start The Week program, which is available as a podcast from the BBC (hopefully in all territories).
China is on at the end, but the whole thing is worth a listen. Indeed in many ways it is a SpecFic special as two of the other authors discussed, Dante and Shakespeare, where not shy of turning their backs on realism. Also China gets to comment in the other sections.
The discussion of EmbassyTown is fairly short but interesting. Host Andrew Marr clearly had difficulty with the SF and the usefulness of cognitive estrangement, but was smart enough to pick up on some Swift references which would anchor the book for his non-genre listeners. I was fascinated to see that A.N. Wilson absolutely loved the book. Now I want to get him and John Mullan together in a cage fight.
My main memory of the program, however, is going to be Andrew Marr mistakenly identifying Dante’s classic work as Paradise Lost. From now on, every time I make a stupid mistake in a podcast, I shall remember that.
Talking of EmbassyTown and podcasts, it is one of the books featured in the latest edition of The Writer and the Critic — one which was recorded live at Continuum 7 in Melbourne and guest-started Cat Valente. As often happens, Mondy and Kirsten get into a big fight about the book, and the messages it may or may not contain. In this case they are arguing mainly about the colonialism theme and whether or not the humans should have left the Akiekei alone in their apparent state of innocent bliss. Kirsten will doubtless be pleased to hear China, in the BBC program, talking about the Akiekei’s language being Edenic.
My own view is that China is far cleverer than most reviews have given him credit for. The colonialism theme is obvious, and like Kirsten and Mondy we can argue over the rights and wrongs of the human actions. However, in my own review for Salon Futura I argued that it is possible to read the Ariekei as being a metaphor for ourselves being colonized by the media and having to learn to understand the lies we are being told. When you do that, suddenly you are in the position of identifying with the Ariekei rather than with the humans, and your views as to whether you want to have your consciousness raised can change. That in turn feeds back into our thoughts about colonialism.
Awards and Sales
Listening to the Coode Street Podcast this morning, I heard Gary mention that, as far as we know, the Hugo is the only award that causes any noticeable effect on book sales. A week ago I would have agreed with him, despite this based entirely on anecdata.
You see, anecdata is all we have. No one does exit polls at bookstores to ask customers why they bought a particular book. We do know, however, that large numbers of people — from Gary & Jonathan to Neil Gaiman to myself — claim to have bought books in their youth specifically because those books were Hugo winners. There’s sufficient mass of anecdata for us to believe that some effect occurred, though we have no idea of the real size.
These days, however, we also have epos data. That’s electronic point of sale, to those of you not in the IT or retail industries. It isn’t accessible to everyone, but publishers do get it, and they are sometimes willing to share.
At Alt.Fiction last weekend I was on a panel about the value of awards. With me on the panel was Tom Hunter, the administrator of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Tom said that he has seen epos data showing that, these days, winning the Clarke has a significant positive effect on epos sales. In other words, when news of the Clarke result goes public, significant numbers of people go out any buy the winning book.
I said “these days” advisedly, because this effect has only been observable in the past two years. That, I am sure, is down to the sterling work that Tom has done promoting the Clarke Award and getting it covered by major media outlets from SFX to The Guardian.
And that’s the point I want to make here. The Hugo is famous primarily because it was the first (and for several years pretty much the only) award for science fiction and fantasy. These days we have lots of awards. We are almost as fond of them as the romance people, and probably for very similar reasons. In order for an award to be of any use in such a crowded market, it has to be effectively promoted, and it has to be respected. This isn’t easy to do, but Tom has proved it is possible. Hopefully it is a lesson that WSFS will learn, and not continue to try to rein in Hugo marketing least the “wrong sort of fan” be encouraged to vote.
By the way, Gary and Jonathan have lots of interesting things to say. I particularly want to endorse their praise for Lucy Sussex. Here’s my review of her previous collection.
Get Ready To Squee
No, it is not a new Temeraire novel (though one is apparently in the works). It is a new podcast, or rather a squeecast, because that’s what it is called. SF Squeecast is a new podcast series in which a group of authors get together and go “Squee!!!” about books they have read that make them happy. Those responsible are:
- Elizabeth Bear
- Paul Cornell
- Seanan McGuire
- Catherynne M. Valente
Order of a sort will be maintained by Lynne M. Thomas, best known as a co-editor of the Hugo-nominated Chicks Dig Time Lords. For further details keep an eye on the official website (though it appears to be offline as I type — see Tor.com for proof that I haven’t imagined this).
Um, squeeeee!!!!!!!
Guardian Podcast on Women in SF
The latest Guardian Books podcast went online today. There is some interesting material, including discussion of the development of language, and an interview with Téa Obreht. The bit that will interest most of you, however, is right at the end. Following on from the dreadful David Barnett article, the podcast interviews Gwyneth Jones about the current state of women in science fiction.
It is a bit embarrassing. To start with the podcast identifies Nicola Griffith as “a blogger” rather than “an award-winning British science fiction writer”, which might have been more appropriate. When asked about women’s involvement in the field, Gwyneth pretty much buys into the invisibility mantra by stating that there were almost no women writing before the 70s. And when asked to name five modern women SF writers she can only manage two: Tricia Sullivan and Justina Robson.
To be fair, I think the latter question meant UK-only, but hey: Liz Williams, Karen Traviss, Jaine Fenn. Also I have no idea what editing The Guardian may have done to Gwyneth’s words, or what warning she will have had about what she was to be asked. But it re-affirmed my opinion that The Guardian isn’t really interested in SF other than as a means to get people yelling at each other in comment threads.
The British Library Podcast
Here, rather later than I had hoped, is the podcast I recorded at the launch of the British Library’s science fiction exhibition. It will turn up on the Salon Futura iTunes feed eventually, but in the meantime you can download it here.
The show begins with me chatting to various people during the launch reception. They are: Ian Whates, Farah Mendlesohn, David Pringle, Paul McAuley, Jon Courtenay-Grimwood, Graham Sleight and Tom Hunter. After that I take a quick tour of the exhibition to give you an idea of what you can find in it. Finally we have three more interviews with Andy Sawyer, John Berlyne and China Miéville.
Because this took a little longer than I expected, the first Clarke Award tweet-up has already happened. Tom may have some more lined up, but in the meantime here’s Amanda Rutter’s report of the event.
And apropos the previous post, the exhibition’s blog contains a post talking about the many women SF writers who are represented in the exhibition.
SF on Woman’s Hour
Today on the BBC4 programme, Woman’s Hour, we had a short discussion of science fiction featuring Gwyneth Jones, Karen Traviss and Farah Mendlesohn. This was, of course, sparked by the British Library exhibition, which is having all sorts of wonderful knock-on effects because it has suddenly given us geeks legitimacy with the Establishment. So, how are we doing taking advantage of that opportunity?
I should say at the start that listening to Woman’s Hour is not a pleasant experience for me. I know it tackles all sorts of “difficult” topics, but I still find it oozes middle class smugness and is obsessed with that favorite British social game of proving your moral superiority by demonstrating that you are a better wife/mother/person than your friends and neighbours. (And I chose wife/mother/person deliberately, as it is almost always women whose lives are held up for scrutiny in this way.) Fortunately the BBC has divided the show into chapters, so if you go here, scroll down, and click on Chapter 4 you will get straight to the interesting bit.
Then there is the supposed question to be answered. The programme wants to know whether science fiction is still a male-only genre, and if not why do “we” still think that it is. The obvious answer to that is, “because you keep telling us it is, fuckwit.” Fortunately Farah is much more polite than I am, and was able to demolish the whole idea with some well-aimed academic authority.
The conversation then went on to discuss real issues faced by women writers. Farah made some good points about women writers being invisible or banished to a feminist ghetto, and Gwyneth said that she felt having been labeled as a feminist early on had damaged her career, partly because everything she now writes is regarded as ‘feminist” even when she’s not addressing feminist issues, and partly because, “The word ‘Feminist’ is poison to many sectors of the science fiction audience.”
Karen went on to talk about how she is published primarily in the US where she can make a lot more money and no one seems to find it odd that she’s a woman writing SF. I note also that no UK publisher would touch her fabulous Wess’har series, despite three PKD nominations. Liz Williams has also found difficulty getting published in the UK. Farah then came in and commented about the difficulty of finding women SF writers in bookstores and libraries in the UK, commenting: “…the market in the States is far better, the market here is problematic…”
So yeah, we Brits do not come out of this very well. I have probably noted here before that the US, Japan and Australia all have SF awards promoting gender and diversity issues, but we don’t. I think Farah was right to say at the end that we shouldn’t blame readers for this. I suspect that cultural attitudes amongst publishers, major booksellers and the media are more to blame. But no one is going to do anything about it except us readers and small presses, are they?
Kevin on the Radio
Well that was a lovely way to start the day. Last night KJFC, one of the local radio stations in the Bay Area, devoted the whole of its Thoughtline program to discussion of Westercon 64. Kevin, together with con chair Glenn Glazer and dealers’ room manager Dave Clark, got a very respectful interview from a presenter who is clearly sympathetic to what we do.
It isn’t the slickest radio in the world. (Glenn dear, you need to stop saying “right” at the end of every sentence.) However, the boys had plenty of opportunity to get the message over, and they did it pretty well, I think. If you would like to hear the show for yourself, download this mp3. There’s a bit of music at the front, but the discussion gets going fairly quickly.
So, thanks to Robert Emmett and KJFC for a great show. I wonder how we can get that sort of thing to happen in Bristol?
Le Guin and Atwood Speak
Thanks to a comment from Petréa Mitchell on another post I discovered this somewhat old but fascinating podcast of a conversation between Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood. Despite the chair of the event giving an introduction that causes Atwood to speculate that he wants to see a cat fight, the two ladies get on very well together. There is lots of good material, including Atwood talking about her friend Judith Merril, explaining why The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the Harvard English Department, and describing her favorite science fiction B-movie.
The recording does seem to be edited down extensively from the 2.5 hours that Petréa thinks the actual event took. Consequently we don’t seem to ever find out why we should be believing that Mr. Darcy appeared out of a lake, but other than everything appears to be very smooth.
Hugo Talk
Yes, Kevin and I have been at it again. There is a new Hugo Award podcast up at SF Awards Watch. In this one we explain why there are only 4 nominees in Short Story this year, why Doctor Who fans don’t have to worry about “splitting the vote” and why Connie Willis keeps getting nominated. There are lots of other questions we answer too. Our thanks to John DeNardo of SF Signal for playing the part of the ordinary fan in the street for us.
In addition to the actual podcast we have extensive show notes packed with statistics from the last 3 years of Hugo history. If you love poring over numbers, this will make you very happy. The data includes pie charts of number of nominating ballots by country of origin, which is information we didn’t get until 2010.
The Hugo Podcast, Episode 2
As you may remember, back in February Kevin and I did an SF Awards Watch podcast in which we tried to dispel some of the more common myths and misconceptions about the Hugo Awards. Well, this year’s nominee lists have been announced, and many of the same complaints are being trotted out again. Also there are some interesting new questions, such as why there are only 4 nominees in Short Story. So we are going to do another podcast. John DeNardo of SF Signal has kindly offered to play the role of Joe Phan and ask the questions. Hopefully I will get the podcast online before I have to rush off to London for the British Library events.
If you have any questions that you would particularly like us to address, please ask them in comments below.
Want the T-Shirt
In the latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast (which I will now forever think of as the Poode Street Codcast) Gary Wolfe quotes an unnamed publishing insider as follows:
“An objective review is not a review, it’s a report”
Yes.
As Jonathan notes in the podcast, reading is an intensely subjective experience. As a reviewer, all you can say is how the book read to you. Naturally we all think we are right, then we talk to other people and discover how differently people can read the same book.
All reviewers are, of course, gatekeepers, in that we tell our readers which books we think are worth reading, and which we think are not. But that is only what we think, and to a great extent our value as reviewers is in explaining why we think those things, not in the validity of our judgments. I am deeply suspicious of any reviewer who appears to want to be an “authority”.
Parsec Awards
These awards are for podcasts, and they are currently going through a public nomination stage. Looking at the current list, I see that there is not a single Clarkesworld story listed as yet. I’m sure that some of you must have enjoyed one or two of them. There’s also currently no mention of Coode Street, The Writer and The Critic, or the Locus Roundtable. You can nominate podcasts here.
Listen To This
The SF Signal podcast on the Borders bankruptcy is great stuff. Go give it a listen. You will be gobsmacked at how crazy the book industry is.