Science Fiction

V.E. Schwab’s Tolkien Lecture

~ Cheryl

Last night I was in Oxford to attend the J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature. This year’s lecture was given by V.E. (Victoria) Schwab. She’s not a writer that I am hugely familiar with, but she’s clearly hugely popular given how quickly the lecture filled up. I’m pleased to say that she provided a rousing defense of the need for diversity in fantasy literature. Also anyone with whom I can squee about the wonderfullness of K. Arsenault Rivera’s The Tiger’s Daughter is OK by me.

Of course many of you were unable to attend the lecture. But the folks at Pembroke College have been amazingly efficient and a video is now available online. It went up earlier today and I see that it already has almost 2000 views. That’s seriously impressive. If you’d like to watch, here it is.

Fringe Happened

~ Cheryl

I have been ridiculously busy of late so I am very behind on writing about things. I’m making a start on catching up. The first thing you need to know about is that the latest BristolCon Fringe event was a big success.

Most of the credit for that should, of course, go to our two readers, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Emma Newman. They are both very high profile and we got the expected crowd as a result.

Adrian began proceedings with a reading from his novel, Dogs of War. This is a story of bioengineered animal soldiers, led by Rex who is trying hard to be a Good Dog but gets sent on a covert mission without Master (the humans want plausible deniability) and has to lead the troop himself. One of the other characters in the troop is a swarm of bees. As you can imagine, it is very weird, but also highly amusing.

Emma read from her newly released novel, Before Mars, which is set in the Planetfall universe and takes place at roughly the same time as After Atlas. It takes place in a small base on Mars, and among other things it addresses themes of post-natal depression and paranoia. Ever cheerful, our Em. It also discusses how you deal with an AI that is potentially hostile to you but runs everything on the base where you live. I have just finshed reading it and, as usual, it is very good.

People have been asking me about the podcasts. We have made recordings, but I don’t have the time to edit them. I will upload them as and when someone else has the time to do the work.

Another Trans Award Winner

~ Cheryl

Recently I was feeling very positive about the large number of trans people who are finalists for the Hugos this year. But that’s not the only area in which trans writers are achieving success. Last weekend the winners of the Kitchies were announced. In the Golden Tentacle (debut) category I spotted two trans people that I know. And one of them won!

Congratulations, then, to Alex Acks who is not only the person who provides the best live commentary from the WSFS Business meteing, but can now call themself an award winning author. Hunger Makes the Wolf is a fun book. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel.

Virginia in the News

~ Cheryl

I managed to miss a lot of local news while I was in Canada. One thing I missed was that Bristol 24/7 did a feature on Virginia Bergin and her Tiptree win. You can find it here.

New Book from Zoran Živković

~ Cheryl

Well that has been a long time coming, and fans of Zoran may be disappointed to learn that this is not a new novel. However, it sounds like a fascinating book. Zoran has recently retired from his post as Professor of Creative Writing at Belgrade University. He’s very much a theorist as well as a practitioner. In this book, which is from an academic publisher, he takes on the themes of First Contact and Time Travel. Both sections are illustrated with stories of his own.

The title of the book, rather obviously, is First Contact and Time Travel: Selected Essays and Short Stories. The publishers say that this is the first volume in a series, so I’m already looking forward to later volumes on other themes.

Thankfully, despite the publishing channel, the book is very affordable. You can pre-order from you know who.

Brief Hugo Thoughts

~ Cheryl

This year’s Hugo shortlists were announced yesterday. I was mostly too wiped to pay much attention, but it did seem to be a very good list and reaction today seems to have confirmed that.

Having been drowning in Tiptree reading for the past year my own ballot was a bit sketchy, but I am delighted to see a few of the works I and my fellow jurors loved getting a nod from the Hugo electorate as well. The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang was on our Honor List, while “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time” by K.M. Szpara was on the Long List. Rivers Solomon, who appears on the Campbell short list, was also on our Honor List for An Unkindness of Ghosts.

Which brings me to another thing. Back when I was getting nominated for Hugos I was generally the only trans person on the list. That didn’t surprise me too much as we only make up a small percentage of the population. Last year there were at least three, including two on the Novel list. This year we have at least six, plus a few more who may identify as non-binary but don’t do so very publicly. Also the Yang and Szpara stories specifically feature trans themes.

This year list is also starting to feel truly international for the first time. It is still largely anglophone — certainly all of the written works were published in English — but the people on the list come from many parts of the world, not just the USA and UK.

Somewhat to my surprise, the category that I am most well read (well, watched) in is DP: Long. Much as I love the first bits of Wonder Woman, and the disc extras, I’m pretty sure that I will be voting for Thor: Ragnarok. I have a sneaking suspicion that Taika Waititi knows what a Hugo is and will make a very silly acceptance video. And he may mention Jack Kirby in the process, because the visuals on that film were totally a tribute to the King.

The category I am going to find hardest is Novella. Nnedi is brilliant, I love JY Yang’s Tensorate stories and would very happy to see another trans winner, but I adore Murderbot. Speaking of whom, I am really pleased to see the Raksura books get a nod in Best Series. I have been a fan of Martha Wells’ work since Emerald City days and am delighted to see her getting recognition at last.

The only thing that disappointed me about the list was that I was hoping to be voting for Discovery in BDP: Short, but Trek fandom went and picked the episode I liked least from it. Still, everyone keeps telling me that I should watch The Good Place and now I have no more excuses. Also the Clipping song appears to be radio-safe, so guess what I’m playing on my show on Wednesday.

My congratulations to all of the finalists, many of whom I am delighted to call friends. Best of luck in August, folks.

Fringe Is Back!

~ Cheryl

I’m delighted to report that BristolCon Fringe is getting back into the swing of things again. We are still experimenting with venues, but there are some great readings lined up for this year.

On Monday we will be at the Gryphon on Colston Street and our readers will be Ken Shinn and Gareth L Powell. Gareth will be reading from his recently released space opera, Embers of War. We are hoping that Virginia Bergin will be able to be there too so we can congratulate her on her Tiptree win.

The readings will start at 7:30pm, but people will start arriving from around 7:00pm because we need time to order drinks first. What Pub says that the Gryphon does evening meals, but I’ve not tried them.

Hugo Myth Season Again

~ Cheryl ~ 12 Comments

Voting is open for this year’s Hugo Awards, and consequently I need to get back to dispelling the strange ideas about the Hugos that seem to proliferate at this time of the year.

This post has been inspired in particular by the latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast where Gary and Jonathan do their usual fine job, but don’t quite get everything right.

Something that they do get right is the “I haven’t read enough” myth. Every year people trot out the idea that if you haven’t read “everything” then you are not eligible to nominate. This is nonsense. Jonathan and Gary make two very good points. Firstly they talk about some categories in which they feel they don’t know enough, but that isn’t stopping them from nominating in other categories. Nor will it stop them from looking at the nominees in those categories once the finalists are announced.

Secondly Gary notes that he has not yet read a number of very high profile novels, including the latest books by Ann Leckie and NK Jemisin. Gary is a novel reviewer for Locus, and has been for decades. It is his job to read novels. But there are so many that he hasn’t had the chance to read these two obvious contenders. I have read them, but because of the Tiptree reading I haven’t yet read the 2017 novels by Cat Valente, Jeff VanderMeer, Kim Stanley Robinson or Nick Harkaway (sorry guys, I have bought them). Both Gary and I will still nominate in the Novel category. No one can read everything.

There is some discussion in the podcast of the Series category and the question of how many words have to have been published for a series to qualify. That limit is 240,000 words. I’m afraid that Nnedi will have to write at least one more Binti book for the series to be eligible.

The other new award is the YA Book. There is no word limit for this. That decision was made deliberately because many YA books are much shorter than books aimed at the adult market. Jonathan mentions the possible overlap between the YA award and Hugo categories. Yes, we know. One of the main reasons why the YA Book Award is not a Hugo is precisely because there was potential for overlap. That was done deliberately. So I’m afraid saying that you won’t nominate a book in both the YA Book Award and a Hugo category is a bit pig-headed.

Where there may be a possibility for overlap is between Novel and Series. NK Jemisin’s The Stone Sky is in line for Novel, and the Broken Earth trilogy is eligible for Series. It would be an amazing achievement if Nora was to win Hugos for all three books in a trilogy and for the series as a whole, but it is possible.

Finally we come to the bit where the podcast goes totally off the rails. Jonathan resurrects one of the best known zombies of Hugo lore, the idea that the Hugos were once for science fiction only and were later changed to include fantasy. This is not entirely Jonathan’s fault. He got the story from Justin Ackroyd. I have had this discussion with Justin before. He was wrong then and he is still wrong now.

The usual “proof” of this myth is that the Hugos used to be known as the “Science Fiction Achievement Awards”, and also affectionately as the Hugos. WSFS made the official name of the awards the Hugos because it was not possible to register a service mark for “Science Fiction Achievement Awards”. Quite rightly that was deemed too generic by the US mark registration people. The phrase “Science Fiction Achievement Awards” was later mostly eliminated from the WSFS Constitution as it was no longer relevant. (The official renaming was ratified in 1992 and, according to the Business Meeting minutes, was passed without objection.)

However, this change does not mean that the Hugos were once “officially” only for science fiction. The oldest version of the WSFS Constitution that we have available is from 1963. You can read it here. If you look at the definitions of the categories (Section 2) you will see that they use the phrase “science fiction or fantasy” (or, in the case of Amateur Magazine, “science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects”). This was long before “Science Fiction Achievement Awards” was dropped from the Constitution. There was, as far any anyone can remember or records show, never a time when the Hugos were exclusively for science fiction.

Of course this doesn’t stop people from nominating only science fiction if that is what they want to do. However, it is a bit disingenuous to compare the Hugos to things such as the World Fantasy Awards (which are exclusively for fantasy) or the Locus Awards (which have separate categories for science fiction and fantasy novels). The reason that those awards are able to make such distinctions is that they have management structures in place that can make those decisions. There is no “Hugo Committee” that is empowered to decide whether a work is science fiction or fantasy. The Hugo Administrators are just administrators and would run a mile from any suggestion that they should make such a decision. To have an award just for science fiction you would have to institute a process for deciding what qualifies, and that process must not devolve down to a popular vote.

In Mourning

~ Cheryl

The news broke last night that Ursula K Le Guin had died. Since then my social media streams have been full of very sad posts from distraught people. Yeah.

Many of my friends, of course, knew Le Guin well, and/or had consciously modeled their writing on hers. I only met her once. As I recall I was so terrified that I didn’t manage to say more than, “hello”.

One of the things about getting old is that you check obituaries for the age of the deceased. These days far too many of the people I see dying are younger than me. 88, however, is what we Brits call a “good innings”. And in this case it is very much a life well lived.

If I manage to reach that age I shall be delightedly astonished. However, even given all those extra years, I don’t expect to produce work as brilliant as Le Guin’s, nor do I expect to have anywhere near the profound influence on the world that she had.

That doesn’t mean that I will stop trying.

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” — Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed

2018 Tolkien Lecture

~ Cheryl

The 2018 J.R.R. Tolkien at Pembroke College will be given by V.E. (Victoria) Schwab. It is on May 1st. I would say “rush to book”, but the announcement went up yesterday and it is already sold out. Whoa, that’s impressive.

Anyway, there’s a waiting list. Good luck.

While I am on the subject of literary events, I see that Jack Zipes is going to be on a panel at Hay this year. He’s talking to Marina Warner and Philip Pullman about “Tales of Wonder, Magic, Resistance and Hope”.

Life Goal

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If you are going to be EVIL, you might as well be EVIL with style.

For those of you who don’t have Netflix and are not enjoying Star Trek: Discovery, our heroes are currently trapped in an alternate universe where the humans are the bad guys and most of the crew has an evil self. Cadet Sylvia Tilly, a wide-eyed, nervous goof in our world, has become “Captain Killy”, the most feared starship captain of the Terran Empire. It is very silly, and a lot of fun. And I want that uniform.

Isn’t it interesting, though, how so much American TV these days is all about alternate worlds in which the bad guys have taken control. I wonder why that could be…

Launching the Horror

~ Cheryl

This evening I was in Bristol to attend the launch of The Hotwells Horror, the anthology that has been put together by local writers in honor of David J. Rodger. I’m delighted to report that it was very well attended. Pete Sutton, who edited the book, tells me that he sold 43 copies all told, which is good going for a launch.

All of the proceeds from the book are being donated to Mind, the mental health charity. You are unlikely to find it in shops, but it is available from Amazon (Kindle only at the moment but hopefully paper to follow).

Jo Hall has reviewed the book here. She was very kind about my story, so I thought I should say a little more about it.

It is set in New York in the 1920s during Prohibition. All of the named characters in the story are real with the possible exception of Nyarlathotep.

One of those characters is Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

There is some wild sex, but it happens off camera.

There are Nightgaunts, and they do what Nightgaunts do.


Art by Michael Whelan

PKD Award Finalists

~ Cheryl

The short list for this year’s Philip K Dick Award were announced last night. They are:

  • The Book of Etta by Meg Elison (47North)
  • Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
  • After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun (The Unnamed Press)
  • The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt (Angry Robot)
  • Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (Orbit)
  • Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
  • All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Tor.com)

Of these, some have been submitted to the Tiptree jury so I can’t talk about them. Tim Pratt’s book has been getting a lot of love on social media and I’m looking forward to having the time to read it. Revenger is a lot of fun and I am impressed with how well Al has got the feel of Treasure Island into the book.

And then there is Murderbot, who is one of my all time favorite science fiction characters. All Systems Red is on my Hugo list for sure.

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 30, 2018 at Norwescon 41 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport, SeaTac, Washington. This year’ Hugo finalists will be announced at the same convention.

Self-Fertilizing Fish

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Every so often I come across a news article that is relevant both to trans science and science fiction. Yesterday was one of those magical days, because I discovered the existence of self-fertilizing fish.

I should probably go back a few stages here by way of explanation.

To start with there is the whole question of what we mean by “biological sex”. Fish do not share the same XX/XY chromosome system familiar from mammals. In fact there are a wide range of different biological mechanisms that fish use to differentiate sex. When I talk about the biological sex of a fish here I mean whether the fish produces eggs, fertilizes eggs, or both.

Readers in the UK are probably familiar with the recent episode of Blue Planet II in which David Attenborough’s team filmed a Sheepshead Wrasse in the process of changing sex. There are, in fact, many fish species that practice what is called Sequential Hermaphroditism, in which the animal is male for part of its life cycle and female for another part. The much loved Clown Fish from Finding Nemo is another example. These fish only exhibit one sex at any one time in their lives.

There are also many fish species that exhibit Simultaneous Hermaphroditism. That is, they are capable of producing eggs and fertilizing eggs. Some species of Sea Bass have these abilities, which is something worth pondering next time you eat one. However, these fish have to have sex with other, similarly hermaphroditic, fish in order to make baby fish. How else would genetic diversity be achieved, right?

However, there is one species of fish (well, more properly two closely related species) that can make babies by individuals having sex with themselves. Enter the spectacularly named Mangrove Killifish.

The killifish is pretty amazing on several levels. It can live in both fresh and salt water, and it can survive for up to two months on land. But self-fertilization is seemingly the most miraculous ability because surely all of the fish would be clones, so how would they evolve? Mutation doesn’t seem an adequate explanation.

However, it turns out that killifish come in two sexes: both and male. The males are very rare, but very popular. If a clone family of both-sex spots one they’ll seek him out and make lots of baby fish. In that way a certain amount of genetic diversity is maintained.

For those who are interested, there is more scientific detail here.

And for those of you thinking of interesting ideas to use in alien biology, have at it!

November Fringe Readings

~ Cheryl

Well, this is a little bit late, but treat it as a timely Solstice present. Here is the audio from the November BristolCon Fringe event, with a bonus interview at the end.

It being just past Halloween, November was a horror month at Fringe. Our first reader was Baylea Hart who describes herself as an IT Technician by day, horror writer by night and a reader everywhere in between. She has a BA in creative writing from Bath Spa University and enjoys watching people grow slightly white after reading her stories. Her short story, “Jack in the Box”, won the 2015 Bristol Horror Writing Competition and her film, Behind the Door, won a Top 50 spot in the Bloody Cuts “Who’s There?” competition and has over 500,000 views on YouTube.

Baylea read from her novel, The Log House, which will be available from Unbound very shortly.

Our second reader for November was Jonathan L Howard, who read from his recently published novel, After the End of the World. This is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Carter & Lovecraft. And yes (spolier!), the world did really end in that book. There is a little bit of explanation as to what is going on in the Q&A, but chapter 1 of the new book stands pretty much on its own. The new world that Dan and Emily find themselves in after the destruction of the world we know is rather different. Explaining just how different allows Jonathan to indulge his passion for alternate history.

No tentacled beings from beyond the stars were harmed in the production of this podcast.

As is traditional, I put both of our authors to the question at the end of the evening. We learned that Baylea has the Best Mum in the World, and that horror writers have dreadful habits as children. Jonathan explained some of the background to After the End of the World. And Gareth Powell ask the very difficult question, “Who would win in a fight: Cthulhu or Godzilla?”

As a bonus, because it is Solstice Day today, here from Salon Futura is the interview I did with Jonathan on my radio show at the start of the month. It has a small amount of overlap with the Q&A, but we make up for that in enthusiastic discussion of Nazi-punching.

Fringe takes a break over the holidays, but we will be back in January with the very wonderful Lucy Hounsom.

A Brief Word on the Rocket Stink

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As some of you will have noticed, a bit of an upset happened over the weekend over the review site, Rocket Stack Rank. As usual, File 770 is on the case.

For those who can’t be bothered to click through, the site’s owner apparently has a policy of giving an automatic one-star review to any work that uses non-binary pronouns. He also allegedly has the cheek do describe himself as a trans ally, which is an utter nonsense, and even manages to recommend stories that he thinks have good trans content. It is all very head-explody stuff.

This reminds me that when Ann Leckie’s Provenance first came out some annoying people tried to have the book removed from Amazon because they claimed that the non-binary pronouns that it uses were errors.

I’m sure you are familiar with the way these stories go now: “oh -clutch pearls- all of this non-binary stuff is so new and confusing and horrible, how will we ever be able to read if we are subjected to these awful, oppressive, bullying pronouns?!”

At which point it is necessary to remind people that this is science fiction we are talking about. Apparently inventing whole new languages for Klingons, Elves and so on is OK, but inventing new pronouns for people who have different gender systems is not. What ever happened to the “literature of ideas”, people?

Of course there are people out there who “go too far” with all of these new fangled pronoun things. Take this, for example:

Which is to say: everyone is referred to by female pronouns—unless the speaker wants to have sex with the person they are referring to, in which case the pronoun shifts to ‘he’.

Head exploded yet? Ready to write a rant about “kids today”?

Well before you do I should note that the quote above comes from a Tor.com essay by Alex Daly McFarlane. It is about a book called Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. That book was written by some guy called Samuel R. Delany, and was published in 1984.

Young people today, eh?

Update: I’m told the policy is to automatically subtract 1 star for non-binary pronouns rather than give 1 star. I can see I may have mis-understood one of the tweets in the File 770 piece. Either way though it is silly.

Tade Thompson Interview

~ Cheryl


As promised last week, I have dug out the interview with Tade Thompson that I did for Ujima and made the whole thing available on Salon Futura. We had a whole pile of issues with the Skype recording on this one so the sound quality is not good, but there is more here than I was able to broadcast on the show.

Tade’s novel, Rosewater has just become the first ever winner of the Best Novel prize in the Nommo Awards from the African Speculative Fiction Society. It seems like there should be a lot of renewed interest in the book, and in Tade’s other work, and that therefore I should share this podcast with you.

In the interview Tade talks about some of the ideas behind Rosewater, about his now released novella, The Murders of Molly Southbourne, and about writing a ghost story.

Fringe Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

Tomorrow will see the final BristolCon Fringe event of 2017. As usual it will be at the Naval Volunteer pub from 7:00pm. Here are the readers.

Baylea Hart is an IT Technician by day, horror writer by night and a reader everywhere in between.

In 2013 she wrote, directed and edited the short horror film Behind the Door, which won a Top 50 spot in the Bloody Cuts “Who’s There?” competition and as of 2015 has over 430,000 views on YouTube.

In October 2015 she won the Bristol Horror Writing Competition with her short story “Jack in the Box”, and had her story published in the Far Horizons E-Magazine. Her short story “Eyes Open” was published in the 12th issue of 9Tales Told in the Dark in 2016.

Baylea graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and enjoys watching people grow slightly white after reading her stories. Her first novel, The Log House, is due to be published in 2017 via Unbound.

In the early 1990s Jonathan L Howard worked as a scriptwriter and video game writer, including writing credits on the highly successful Broken Sword series of video games.

Following one very positive review of the writing, Jonathan says:

“All this positive feedback made me think that just possibly I might have the ability to make it as a professional writer. I dug out a lot of my old notes from years before, and started working on them again. One set of notes was about a necromancer called Johannes Cabal.”

His first novel, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, was published in 2009. The fifth, The Fall of the House of Cabal, was published in 2016. Jonathan was one of this year’s Guests of Honour at BristolCon. At Fringe he will be reading from After the End of the World, the second in his Carter & Lovecraft series. Eldritch horror can be expected.

I will be hosting, and putting the readers to the question, as usual. Hopefully I will see some of you there.

The 2017 Nommo Awards – Africa’s Finest

~ Cheryl

The Nommos are awards given out by the African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS). I’m delighted to see Africa, and the African diaspora, coming together like this. Many of the winners are unknown to me, as it should be. However, the top two awards went to Nigerians who live in the West. The novella prize went to Nnedi Okorafor for Binti. That will be no surprise to many people. And the novel prize went to Tade Thompson for Rosewater.

I’m not familiar with the other novel finalists, but I have read Rosewater and it is a fabulous book. What’s more, hot on the heels of of the award announcement came the news that Orbit has bought a trilogy from Tade, of which Rosewater is the first. I’m absolutely delighted.

Somewhere I have an interview with Tade about Rosewater that I broadcast part of on Ujima. I’ll dig it out and stick it on Salon Futura over the weekend.

Tade, mate, when are you coming to read at BristolCon Fringe?