Fans of Spot will be sad to hear she suffered some kind of accident, stayed gone for five days and then reappeared with an infected compound fracture of the right hind leg. She had to go to the hospital for emergency surgery and lost the leg. She came through surgery okay, and is currently recuperating. The vet staff commented on what a sweet kitty she is. Please keep her in your thoughts.
Are POC tokens in the major SFF awards?
September 25, 2018
Book sales, books, conformity, diversity, fantasy, hard SF, hugo awards, Hugo nominations, literary awards, literary sf, Nebula Awards, nominations, political correctness, publishing, review, science fiction, science philosophy, Speculative fiction Greg Hullender, Locus Reading List, Natalie Luhrs, Rocket Stack Rank 58 Comments
It took me a long time to get through Crowley’s book, and I’ve got one more novel to review for the World Fantasy Awards. While I’m working on it, here is some commentary on the Locus Reading List that is one of the major feeders into the SFF awards.
For the last couple or three years Natalie Luhrs has done an analysis of the Locus Reading List, checking the gender and race breakdown. Here’s her analysis for 2017, and here’s the one for 2018. In the 2018 conclusions section, she’s noted that the list is important because the effects go way beyond just recommendations on what people should read. It’s also about how readers draw from lists like this or sites like Rocket Stack Rank, for example, to make their nominations for the awards.
Luhrs’ results for 2017 shows a slant toward male writers and a tendency to repeat the same person-of-color (POC) writers across categories and years. The analysis for 2018 shows the list achieved closer gender parity as a whole and slightly expanded non-binary writers, but actually fewer POC were included than in 2017. On the positive side, in 2018 Luhrs found a few additions to the list of favored POC.
Luhrs then went on to complain that “We don’t have nearly enough women or POC editing anthologies.” I’m suspecting this could be a mistaken assumption. Locus listed only three, but if you check, there are a bunch of female and POC editors out there trying to do it. The problem is that the Locus List hasn’t recognized the women and POC who are editing anthologies.
So what does this mean? Is the perception that women and POC can’t edit good quality anthologies? Are their anthologies actually substandard? Do these editors/publishers struggle to get professional quality submissions because they’re not considered competent? Do they struggle to get professional level review?
I’ve had the conversation with Greg Hullender of Rocket Stack Rank about how “quality” is defined in the SFF community. This boils down to accepting that the most successful magazines, publishers and editors get the best works, and you can make a list of the “best” by reading just these magazines and looking at the releases of these publishers or these few recognized editors. This system further promotes the sources, of course, which means they become more successful and continue to shut out minority editors struggling to be found in the small press. That’s why the same people appear on the Locus Reading List every year. The system is self-perpetrating.
If we really want to achieve something more than tokenism, shouldn’t we look for another avenue for editors to make it into this system?
Review of Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley
September 21, 2018
book review, Book sales, books, dark fantasy, fantasy, literary awards, literary sf, publishing, reading, review, Speculative fiction afterlife, book review, carrion, Civil War, crows, dark fantasy, death, death birds, death symbols, fantasy, history, immortals, John Crowley, Saga Publishing, smallpox, World Fantasy Award Leave a comment
This book is a finalist for the 2018 World Fantasy Award. It’s published by Saga and runs 465 pages. This review contains spoilers.
The narrator has recently lost his wife to illness and is dying himself. He finds a sick crow and nurses it back to health. They become friends and it tells him its history. The crow Dar Oakley calls the realm of the crows Ka, and that of humans Ymr. He also knows a realm of Other. Dar Oakley receives his name from a human girl he calls Fox Cap. The two of them go into Other to find Nothing, and Dar Oakley finds it but hides it for himself. Fox Cap cries and afterward dies, but then Dar Oakley finds he is immortal, always reborn. Humans have battles that provide carrion, and crows find they can encourage them to kill each other. Following a Saint, Dar Oakley is caught by a storm and blown to a New World, where the people are killed by a mass sickness brought from the Old World. There is a great War where the dead in blue and gray provide a huge feast, and crows become numerous because of the growing bounty. Dar Oakley becomes friends with poet Anna Kuhn, and later her son becomes a great crow hunter. Dar Oakley encourages the crow flock to attack him, and they are eventually successful against him. The narrator wants Dar Oakley to lead him and his housekeeper to the Other place of the dead. Will this plan be successful?
So, this book is about death. Crowley is a well-known stylist, and he gets points for creating meaning in the narrative. Still, I found this really hard reading. Because Dar Oakley is a bird, he is light-minded and in general all his observations are surface level. That means we get a lot about flocks and mating and chicks, and the meaning takes shape from the carrion events and from what the humans say.
It’s clear that Crowley did a lot of research on the topic of crows and their status as death birds. The lore in this narrative is sort of scary, and I think humans are lucky that crows aren’t any bigger than they are. On the other hand, the events that feed the crows don’t say anything much good about humans, either.
This one isn’t for the faint of heart.
Four stars.
Review of The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery
September 15, 2018
Best Short Story, book review, Book sales, books, dark fantasy, fantasy, literary awards, literary sf, Speculative fiction art, Black Static, book review, Budapest, creativity, dark fantasy, death, depression, Interzone, masks, mortality, murder, music, novella, serial killer, Simon Avery, songs, songwriting, TTA Novellas, TTA Press, winter, World Fantasy Award 3 Comments
This novella is a finalist for the 2018 World Fantasy Award, and the title piece for Book 4 of the TTA Novellas series, published in 2017. The British press TTA also publishes Interzone and Black Static. The book is dark fantasy and also contains the short story “Going Back to the World.” The novella is about 111 pages and the short story runs about 40. This review contains spoilers.
Krisztina Ligetti is a cult artist, a singer/songwriter living in Budapest who produced one hit album years ago and then had nothing else to follow up with. After her lover Alice dies, Krisztina begins hearing elusive music that turns out to be the songs of mortality from people around her. She collects songs for a new album one-by-one that become complete as people die. She reconnects with her father, a 60s pop star who has been diagnosed with cancer, and hears his song. The story darkens as Krisztina finds she’s being followed by a man in a porcelain mask. Tracing the song of a ballerina, she encounters the writer Rebeka, a serial killer with a similar gift who has no compunction about killing people to complete their stories. Rebeka wants her story. Can Krisztina find a way to survive?
This narrative has something of a sick feel, as it’s about winter and death and the extreme depths that people plumb to feed their creativity. The title refers to the method Krisztina uses to produce her songs, detailing the grief and pain that go into each one. It lingers over relationships, failures and bitter coffee. The imagery seems foremost, as it’s all about bright futures declining into eventual decay and death. There’s nothing left at the end but the songs.
On the not so great side, the narrative jumps around a bit and seems fixated on Alice’s death, while her character remains undeveloped and peripheral to the main story. The whole thing is about depressed people who need some joy in their lives. I’m also left wondering how Rebeka gets away with her murders. Although Krisztina sees her commit a murder and the man in the mask knows who she is, nobody reports this to the police. But then, I guess it’s not about the reality.
Three and a half stars.
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