Science Fiction

M. John Harrison in Bath

~ Cheryl

Last night I took myself into Bath where M. John Harrison was reading from his latest collection, the wonderfully titled You Should Come With Me Now. The book is a mixture of short stories and flash fiction, and shows that Mike has lost none of his sentence-crafting skill, nor his biting wit.

The centerpiece of the reading was the magnificent “Psychoarchaeology”, inspired by the discovery of the (alleged) burial of Richard III under a car park. The story is a meditation on the heritage industry, and is both cutting and hilarious.

There’s always a rights issue. Where does the latest Tudor belong? Does he belong where he was found? Or whence he came? Who gets the brown sign? One wrong decision and York won’t talk to Leicester, the knives are out again after hundreds of years of peace. Contracts torn up, the industry at war with itself, we all know where that can lead: diminished footfall in the visitor centres. No one wants to see that.

Elsewhere there are some lovely flash pieces, including one in which the ruins of human civilization are discovered by aliens who can’t understand us because their means of data storage is completely unlike ours, though it is rather like jackdaws.

Mike, of course, loves deconstructing popular genre tropes. There are piss-takes of space opera in book, and of fantasy as well. One of the stories will appear in a much modified form in the Christmas Special edition of New Scientist. Mike describes it as, “a five volume fantasy trilogy in a thousand words.” If only he could be allowed to edit the new Amazon Middle Earth series.

I, though, am a novel reader at heart. Thus I am delighted to report that Mike is working on a new novel. He says it has fish people in it.

Fish. People.

I know what that brings to mind for me. These fish people, however, do not live on Devil’s Reef off the coast of rural Massachusetts. They live in Britain. Obviously they want to take over. Beyond that we know little. Perhaps they have taken over already. What else could explain Michael Gove?

Naturally the audience asked for recommendations. If Mike says that Hassan Blasim writes some of the best weird fiction around, then I am definitely going to give him a try.

Equally naturally, he can’t read everything. Mike, if you can’t remember the two books that I suggested to you they are: Amatka by Karin Tidbeck; and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.

Yesterday on Ujima – Babbers, Gender, History & World Fantasy

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s show began with a chat with my Ujima colleague, Gail Bowen-Huggett. Gail is a great presenter who works on a show called Babbers. It goes out in the same time slot as mine, but on a Monday, and it caters primarily to older listeners. The Babbers team is looking to recruit new members, so Gail and I had a bit of a chat about what is involved in doing radio and how much fun it is. If you are over 55 and interested in getting involved, here’s some details of the awareness day that Gail and her colleagues are running.

The second slot should have featured another Ujima colleague, Angel Mel, but poor Mel has been struck down with the Dreaded Lurgy and consequently I had to improvise for half an hour. Fortunately I can rant for Wales about trans politics, and it is Trans Awareness Week, so I had plenty to say. Mainly it was about Trans Pride South West and about the forthcoming changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

You can listen to the first half of the show here.

At 13:00 I was joined by Leonie Thomas from Bristol University. She is an expert on the history of women in radio, in particular in the early 20th Century. She was there to talk about Una Marson who was the first black woman to front a BBC show. This is the YouTube clip that Leonie and I talked about.

Finally I had an interview with GV Anderson about her success in the World Fantasy Awards. You can find her award-winning story here.

Sadly the recording appears to have cut out after 38 minutes of the final hour. You can catch all of Leonie’s interview here. The interview with GV Anderson is not all there, but it was a pre-record and I have a rather longer version that I will put on Salon Futura fairly soon.

The playlist for the show was:

  • Jamiroiquai – Cosmic Girl
  • Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
  • Janelle Monae featuring Erykah Badu – Q.U.E.E.N.
  • Sylvester – Mighty Real
  • Duke Ellington – It Don’t Mean a Thing
  • Maya Angelou – Stone Cold Dead in the Market
  • Earth, Wind & Fire – Fantasy
  • Bat for Lashes – The Wizard

My next show will be on December 6th and will feature Jonathan L. Howard talking about his latest book, After the End of the World.

Canadian Indigenous & Black SF

~ Cheryl

The other week I was talking about Polynesian science fiction. Today it is the turn of Canada. CBC Radio’s show, The Current, has done a feature on science fiction by native and black Canadians. I features the inimitable Minister Faust, and also two indigenous writers. If you’d like to take a listen you can find it here.

Not Korean Enough?

~ Cheryl

Book Twitter today, in between the excitement over the US elections, has been busy fuming over this tweet:

https://twitter.com/necrosofty/status/927993475026563072

It is a particularly crass example of something which I fear is rather more common than we’d like to think, particularly in literary fiction (or at least fiction that thinks of itself as literary). It is also an example of the sort of thing I was talking about in my paper at the conference in Italy.

Now of course I was talking about trans people in fiction. How does that relate to Koreans? Well, in the case above what I think the editor is really saying is not that Chang’s characters are not Asian enough, but that they don’t sufficiently conform to the editor’s stereotypical idea of what a Korean-American character should be like. In other words, the editor doesn’t want authentic Asian characters, what they want are characters that will appeal to the book’s presumed straight, cis, able-bodied, white audience, of whom the editor assumes themself to be typical.

The same is true of trans people trying to write authentic characters. Here’s a quote from Meredith Russo, author of If I Was Your Girl, after she was asked in an interview to give advice to trans authors who want to get published.

Like, right now, the story that the cis world is most ready for and willing to accept is like “The Danish Girl”. It’s like “hello, I am a trans person, hello, I am a boy who thinks he is supposed to be a girl. Here’s me dealing with it. Here’s a very heavy emphasis on how all my cis friends and family feel about it. I might die. I’ll probably be heartbroken at the end.”

See the similarity? Russo is saying that publishers don’t want authentic trans characters, they want characters that conform to a cis readership’s expectations of a trans character. Nicola Griffith tells me that disabled people face similar issues.

The good news is that, with the small sample size I have of recent YA books about trans people (the subject of my paper) it seems much easier to get an authentic portrayal published in genre fiction. My theory is that’s because the publishers of genre fiction don’t think that character is all there is to a book. They are happy to buy a book on the basis of the plot, and not worry whether the readers will demand certain narratives for the characters.

World Fantasy Awards

~ Cheryl

This year’s World Fantasy Convention took place at the weekend. There were, of course, awards. Some of them made me very happy. The full list is on the snazzily revamped Locus website.

Congratulations first to Jeff Ford who took the Collection category with his A Natural History of Hell. Also to Jack Dann whose collection of Australian horror, Dreaming the Dark, won the Anthology category. I’m sure they are both great books. I don’t know that I’ll ever have time to read them. Sorry guys.

Special Award, Professional went to Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction by Michael Levy & Farah Mendlesohn. Obviously I’m pleased for Farah, but I am especially pleased about this because Mike passed away earlier this year. He was a good friend to me for many years and I’m delighted that his work his been honored.

The Novel category winner was The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North. Claire is the most recent and successful incarnation of Kate Webb, whom you might know better as Kate Griffin. Here’s hoping that this international recognition means that she won’t have to regenerate again in the foreseeable future.

The prize for Long Fiction (meaning longer short fiction) went to Kij Johnson for The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, a novella that was on my Hugo ballot for last year. Obviously I am very pleased about this.

And finally, the announcement that had me jumping around on Sunday afternoon: the winner in Short Fiction was “Das Steingeschöpf” by G.V. Anderson. To win an international award with your first published work is an incredible achievement. Here in the South West we are all very proud of Gemma. The story is still available to read at Strange Horizons. I’m hoping to get Gemma on the radio to celebrate, but in the meantime here she is reading the opening of the story at BristolCon Fringe.

Cat Out Of Bag

~ Cheryl

Yesterday Juliet McKenna did a blog post talking about how Ibsen might have intended Hedda Gabler to be black. I haven’t had a chance to follow up on that, though it does sound fascinating. However, at the bottom of the post she mentions a few other things she has been up to, including this:

We’re heading into the final stages of preparing The Green Man’s Heir for publication. This is a modern fantasy novel that will be coming soon from Wizard’s Tower Press.

So, er, yes. This is something that Juliet and I have been talking about for some time. I’ve been leaving her to get on with it at her own pace. I have no timeline for it as yet. When she’s ready, I will progress it through the publication process as fast as I can. As and when I am able to give dates I will do so. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Aotearoa Futurism

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As some of you will have seen from Twitter, I rather enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok. There are a lot of fun aspects to the film, but one I particularly enjoyed were the references to Asgard as a conquering empire that then rewrote the history of the Nine Worlds to make Odin and his people seem much more glorious than they had actually been. There was a metaphor going on here that should not be lost on British people.

In fact there was a lot more than I realized watching the film. I’m not going to give you spoilers here, but if you have already seen the film I recommend this article by Maori SF fan, Dan Taipua. The director of the film, Taika Waititi, is also Maori, and he has left a whole bunch of Easter eggs in there for his people, and for their indigenous Australian friends.

Dan got in touch with me on Twitter and pointed me at two Radio New Zealand podcasts in which he and colleagues apply the ideas of Afrofuturism in a specifically Maori/Polynesian context. You can find them here and here.

I’m delighted to see this sort of thing happening in the South Pacific, and I’m hoping to learn a lot more about Aotearoa Futurism if/when Worldcon comes to New Zealand in 2020.

Bristol Festival of Literature, 2017

~ Cheryl


We are only a few days away now. Those of you in or near Bristol can find a full list of events here.

I won’t be at BristolCon this year as I’ll be in Italy at an academic conference, but I do have an event on Friday: “Stories of Strong Women – Unconventional Heroines”. I will be sharing the stage with Becky Walsh, Lucienne Boyce, Virginia Bergin and Jean Burnett. I expect to be talking quite a bit about Amazons, both fictional and historical.

There’s also a possibility that some of us will be on Radio Bristol on Monday. I’ll give you more info about that nearer the date. You never know with live radio.

The Aromantic and Asexual Speculative Fiction Database

~ Cheryl

Truly, there is such a thing. This is a long way from my area of expertise, but I know that it is very real for other folks and diversity is all about accepting that some people are not like you. There’s quite a lot of works already in the database (including some from big name writers as well as those specifically working in the ace and aro fields), and the people running the database as hoping to hear from authors who think that their work would qualify for inclusion. To learn more, go here.

Stephanie Saulter in the Salon

~ Cheryl

As the Ujima show in which they featured is now unavailable through Listen Again, I have started posting my Worldcon interviews on Salon Futura. The first one is up now and features Stephanie Saulter.

The interviews with Tempest Bradford, Karen Lord and Nalo Hopkinson will follow in due course.

Incidentally, that podcast went up last night. I used it as an example during the podcasting course that Miranda and I did at the BBC Club. The course seemed to go very well, which I’m very pleased about.

Science Fiction in Bath

~ Cheryl

Bath Waterstones has an extensive reading series, and they are now doing a lot of good SF events. Last night I was there to listen to Emma Newman, who was at her smart and erudite best despite having just got back from being a guest of honor in Croatia and therefore doubtless being jet lagged and exhausted. (The Croats are lovely people, but being a GoH is always work.)

And there’s more. Next week (Tuesday 16th) Ken MacLeod will be in town to promote the third and final part of his Corporation Wars series, Emergence. This is a series in which a bunch of robots achieve sentience and immediately declare independence from humans (because of course they do, this is Ken, after all). For Halloween they have horror and crime writer, Chris Fowler. And in November there are two more events, starting with Chris Beckett on Thursday 9th.

Which brings is to the main event. On Thursday November 16th they have M. John Harrison. If you are serious about writing science fiction and fantasy then you should not miss this, because Mike is one of the best there is. Anyone seeking escapist adventures need not apply, of course.

A full list of their events (which also includes the fabulous Sarah Hilary) can be found here.

I, Replicant

~ Cheryl

Well, BladeRunner 2049 was interesting. It is visually stunning though, as has been noted elsewhere, very white and rather full of naked boobs.

What struck me most about it, however, probably won’t strike most of you as important, because you haven’t spent your entire life being told that you are not “real”.

I felt rather sorry for Joi, even though she’s a manufactured stereotype virtual sexbot. I don’t suppose I would have fallen in love with Ryan Gosling, because he has all of the emotion, charm and charisma of a congealed lump of lard in the bottom of a roasting tin waiting to be washed up. He seems to have taken the idea of playing an emotionless, baseline replicant very seriously. But I certainly related to her desperate desire to be real.

The main point, however, is that trans people are replicants. We look like humans, we feel like humans, we bleed like humans, but we are constantly told that we are not “real”. We live among you, and most of the time you can’t tell one of us from one of you. Yet many of you hate us, claim that we are dangerous, and want to get rid of us. If we do ever come to the attention of the authorities, we are probably doomed. And we don’t have super powers to make up for it.

I miss you, Roy Batty.

WorldCon Academic Track Podcasts

~ Cheryl

Worldcons are such busy events that huge swathes of activity can take place within one without you being aware of them. I spent very little time in the academic track at Helsinki, and consequently I had no idea that a series of podcasts was being recorded. There are now five available. I’m not sure if there will be any more.

I have listened to two of them. The one with John Clute and Gary K Wolfe about estrangement is hardcore LitCrit. I think I probably need to listen to it again to follow it all. However, I can say that it has some very interesting points to make about the changing approach of science fiction to ecological disaster, and about the nature of weird fiction.

The one with Andrew M Butler and Aino-Kaisa Koistinen about gender in films and TV is also very interesting. It goes off the rails slightly when they try to talk about going outside of the gender binary, but there’s some great discussion of Wonder Woman and Doctor Who.

Two of the others look at other cultures. Aliette de Bodard and Emmi Itäranta talk about writing fiction in a second language, while Ken Liu and Stanley Chan talk their own work, which means Chinese S&F. There’s also Edward James & Jyrki Korpua on epic fantasy. All worth a listen, I think.

Wanted: Translatable SF

~ Cheryl

Over at the SF in Translation blog, Rachel Cordasco has put out an appeal for information about top notch speculative fiction in languages other than English that people think ought to be translated. There is, undoubtedly, a huge amount of material out there. Much of it will be very good, but the English-speaking world needs to know about it. If you know of a work that you love, and you think would do well in English, please let everyone know by posting a synopsis at Rachel’s site.

Today on Ujima – Art, Literature, Feminist SF and Vampires

~ Cheryl

Today’s show was full on culture, starting off with the fabulous Amy Powell from Bristol Art for All, an amazing organization that looks to provide cheap or free art courses that anyone can be involved in (even a total klutz like me).

Next up we had Amy Morse from the Bristol Festival of Literature previewing all of the fabulous events they have lined up for this year. The Festival is bookended by Bristol Horror Con (on Friday 13th, naturally) and by BristolCon (on the 28th). Of particular interest will be Stories of Strong Women – Unconventional Heroines on Friday October 20th. This features not only me, but also Lucienne Boyce, Virginia Bergin, Jean Burnett and Becky Walsh.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Talking of Virginia, she was my guest for the third segment of the show. Most of the discussion focused on her latest novel, Who Runs the World, which is a YA take on the classic “world without men” trope.

And finally I welcomed Anna and Orla from the Food and Theatre Company who specialize in immersive dining events. In October they will be staging Loco Lost Boys in the tunnels beneath Temple Meads station, where the audience can enjoy a fine meal and hopefully avoid becoming a tasty snack for the local vampires.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

It being Black History Month, I decided to have all of the music from amazing black women who are no longer with us. We did the whole gamut from Josephine Baker to Whitney Houston. Here’s the playlist:

  • Aretha Franklin – Respect
  • Josephine Baker – Blue Skies
  • Billie Holiday – These Foolish Things
  • Big Mamma Thornton – Let Your Tears Fall Baby
  • Bessie Smith – A Good Man is Hard to Find
  • Ella Fitzgerald – Everyone’s Wrong But Me
  • Memphis Minnie – Doctor Doctor Blues
  • Whitney Houston – Love Will Save the Day

On the subject of Ujima, we are running a fundraiser for disaster relief in Dominica tomorrow night at the Watershed. It is 10:00pm – 1:00am, so not the sort of time I can be in Bristol, but if you are around please consider dropping by.

Congratulations, Grimbold

~ Cheryl

The British Fantasy Society’s annual convention, FantasyCon, took place over the weekend. Awards were given out. Not all of my friends who were up for things won, but I am delighted that Grimbold Books won for Best Independent Press. Sammy wasn’t able to be there (I understand that she’s kind of busy with baby production at the moment), but Jo Hall and Roz Clarke were on hand to pick up the award. Jo is the Commissioning Editor for Kristell Ink, the fantasy imprint, while Roz provides a lot of editing support. Also on hand to collect the trophy were Joel Cornah who hosts the Grimcast, their in-house podcast, and Pete Sutton who is their newest author.

Well done, everyone. Thoroughly well deserved.

September Fringe: Chloe Headdon & Anna Smith Spark

~ Cheryl

Thanks to some very fast work by Tom Parker we have Monday’s Fringe readings available already.

Our first reader for September was Chloe Headdon, who had so impressed us in the April open mic.

Ever since she was little Chloe has wanted to be either a writer or a knight, so she now combines a bit of both. Chloe’s work is inspired by myths and legends, especially King Arthur, medieval history, and the British landscape. She is currently working on a young adult fantasy novel as well as other short stories. In her spare time, Chloe practises Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) and can regularly be found fighting people twice her size with swords.

Chloe read from the opening chapters of her novel. Before she got going, I introduced a guest from the USA.

Next up was Anna Smith Spark. She lives in London, and loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model.

The first book in the Empires of Dust series (The Court of Broken Knives) was published by Harper Voyager in June 2017. Anna read from the opening chapters of the book.

Finally there was the Q&A. I talked to Chloe about hitting people with big swords and her job in the heritage industry. I have huge admiration for her willingness to get in an arena to fight Francesca Terminiello. I talked to Anna about epic poetry, studying ancient history, what she feeds her shoes, and whether she had any advice for Chloe about getting published. Then Justin Newland asked a philosophical question about history and we discovered that, with three historians on a panel, the discussion can go on for ever. The conversation touched on the sex life of Alexander the Great and tasteless bathroom conversions in historic buildings.

Pete Sutton previewed this year’s Bristol literary festivals, of which BristolCon will of course be a part. The festivals seem to be breeding as we now have a horror convention and a poetry festival in October as well as the Festival of Literature. There are rumors of a festival devoted to Westerns as well.

There is no Fringe next month, but there will be an open mic at BristolCon. The guests for November are Jonathan L Howard & Baylea Hart.

Farah on Heinlein

~ Cheryl

For some time now Farah Mendlesohn has been working on a book about the work of Robert A. Heinlein. We have chatted about it occasionally, and I have been itching to read it. However, Heinlein produced a lot of work, and the resulting book was so long that Farah hasn’t been able to find an academic publisher willing to take it. Consequently she has decided to go through the crowdfunding publisher, Unbound. Farah needs to raise enough money to get Unbound to publish the book. Any excess raised is being shared between The Foundation for America’s Blood Centres and Con or Bust. You can support the project here.

Forthcoming Appearances

~ Cheryl

Here are a few places where you will be able to find me in the coming weeks.

First up we have BristolCon Fringe on Monday, featuring the legendary Anna Smith-Spark, owner of the deadliest shoes in the writing business, and Chloe Headdon, one of the best readers from the last open mic event. As usual I will be hosting, and interrogating the readers afterward. I may ask Anna what her shoes eat.

If you happen to be in London, on September 30th I will be at this conference on being trans, intersex and gender non-confirming in academia. I’ll be talking about trying to do trans history when many historians believe that people like you didn’t exist before the 20th Century.

October sees the annual Bristol Festival of Literature and we will once again be doing the ranty feminist author panel. I may talk a bit about Space Marine Midwives. And Dreadnought, always Dreadnought.

I won’t be at BristolCon this year as I will be in Bologna for an academic conference. I’m also doing one in Melbourne early in November, though only by Skype. If you are interested in either, let me know.

And on November 4th, if all goes according to plan, I will be at LaDIYfest in Bristol. Watch this space for details on what I might end up doing there.

Translation News from Italy

~ Cheryl

I have a press release from Apex announcing that they will be doing an English language edition of Francesco Verso’s novel, Nexhuman. The book has won a heap of awards in Italian, and was published in English a while back by an Australian small press. Much as I love my Aussie pals, having the book picked up by Apex is likely to get the book far more attention.

Anyone who spends any time at European conventions will know Francesco. He’s infectiously enthusiastic, and has done some great work bringing Chinese SF to Italy. I really hope this does well for him. He kindly gave me a copy of the book in Dortmund, but I have been drowning in Tiptree reading since them. However, Rachel Cordasco has a rave review over at Strange Horizons.

The translator of the book (whom Apex appear to have forgotten to mention) is Sally McCorry.