The full list.

There are some things I'm pleased about (The Arrival for Best Related Book! *waves rooting flag*), but my principal reaction to the Novel list is to be glad I'm not voting this year. I plan to read The Yiddish Policeman's Union and Brasyl, but my reaction to the other three—Rollback (Sawyer), The Last Colony (Scalzi), and Halting State (Stross)—is a collective "enh, more of the same." For personal, just finishing breakfast values thereof, though I suspect this is also affected by not seeing any of my novel nominees on the list.

(Post-shower clarification about the three S's: I'm allergic to Stross's fiction, and have decided not to read Scalzi's fiction for reasons that—trust me—have no application or relevance to anyone else. I don't think I need to explan about Sawyer.)

Screw flying cars. Where is my in-home custom clothing fabricator?

(Prompted by an unfun trip to get maternity clothes. Chad thought I was going to say "uterine replicator," but I pointed out that even if I wasn't needing maternity clothes now, I'd still have to buy clothes sometime.)

* * *

The first four episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender were entertaining; pitched a little young, but that did make them undemanding after a long day. We'll probably keep watching.

* * *

Hugo nominees update:

Ragamuffin (booklog) and The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (booklog) for novel; honorable mention to The Secret History of Moscow (booklog), which I am allergic to. The Arrival (booklog) for related book, which you all have to go out and get right this minute, seriously, I mean it!

I may try and squeeze in Acacia, but am unlikely to get to Shelter (I'm sick of winter and am not much for dystopias at the best of times).

* * *

Just a few links, because I've been spending all my delicious time on boskone reports.

( links )

Do not click the cut unless you've finished both volumes of The Orphan's Tales. You won't be able to answer the question and it will ruin your reading experience. Really.

( book-destroying SPOILERS for The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice )

Suddenly it's February, I have less than a month to get my Hugo nomination ballot in order, and so far my ballot consists solely of Shaun Tan's The Arrival (ETA: booklog entry) for Best Related Book. Eek!

( cut for lists )

What else? I did a very quick search for 2007 lists and tagged them on delicious, if you're looking for reminders. Recommend me novels: but, it should be accompanied with specific reasons that I, personally, would like it, and as much or more than I might like the three things I plan to read. I will either ignore or mock anyone who fails to follow directions.

Description:

World Fantasy Con: Urban Fantasy—Beyond the Usual Suspects
It seems as if most urban fantasy uses the familiar European myths. What other possibilities are there? Which authors have successfully exploited them?
Ekaterina Sedia, Ernest Lilley (m), Marie Brennan, Melanie Fletcher, Jenna Black

(In post-panel conversation, Sedia and Brennan noted the problems with using "exploited" in that description.)

The vast majority of this panel was not about existing or possible non-European urban fantasies, but about cultural appropriation. The responsibility for this rests with the moderator. Not only did he seem to want to talk a lot about cultural appropriation, his comments—well, my most charitable interpretation was that his phrasing and manner were deliberately exaggerated to provoke discussion and, possibly, as an attempt at humor. (He specifically introduced his most offensive remark as a joke.) And they were certainly provoking.

This report is not about that part of the panel, because I do not want to host a discussion of cultural appropriation at this time. If the topic interests you, there's much to read already (try starting with International Blog Against Racism Week's posts), and of course you can always start a discussion in your own space. However, after the writing-and-cultural-defaults discussions this summer, well, I'd say I have PTSD on writing and race discussions except that it would trivialize actual trauma. Regardless: discussion of cultural appropriation: DO NOT WANT.

Here's what my notes boil down to, then:

Urban fantasies using non-European myths:

• Lilith Saintcrow, Dante Valentine series (Anubis features prominently)
• Neil Gaiman, American Gods ("mythology fanfic"—Brennan) and Anansi Boys
• Liz Williams, Detective Chen series (Chinese Heaven and Hell as two other locations that characters move between routinely)
• Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch trilogy (translated from the Russian and set in Russia; Brennan commented that the mythology felt much more generic than the mundane aspects)
• Paper Cities, an anthology edited by Sedia
• Jenn Reese, Jade Tiger (Chinese-American protagonist)
• C.E. Murphy, the Walker Papers, starting with Urban Shaman (American Indian themes, maybe protagonist? (first is on the to-read bookcase))
• Tim Powers, Last Call, Expiration Date (American fantasy; though Last Call is the Fisher King in Las Vegas)
• Sean Stewart's non-secondary-world fantasy [with varying degrees of urbanity, I think]

General comments:

• Brennan: there are two extreme poles of approach: on one hand, there's the American Gods diaspora, and on the other, why can't I do urban fantasy set in India?
• Sedia: re: filing serial numbers off cultures: that's probably easier in secondary worlds, since urban fantasy takes place in urban, contemporary, real places.
• Brennan maintains an extensive list of multi-cultural fantasy.

After the panel:

• K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
• Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales
• Ian McDonald, River of Gods (set in India)

So: let's do the panel here. Comments on the books listed above? Recommendations of other books? Really cool things that haven't been written yet but should be? And if people want to give their definitions of urban fantasy, go ahead—though I'm not particularly interested in picking a definition as long as I know what you're using.

[Edited to promote a link from the comments: swan_tower has broader questions over in panel, take two.]

Before I disappear into reading Harry Potter—

Is there anyone reading this who is either from Cambodia or is knowledgable about contemporary Cambodian culture, and who's read Geoff Ryman's Hugo-nominated novellete "Pol Pol's Beautiful Daughter" (pdf)? Because I read it last night and its use of Cambodia is making me uncomfortable, but I am very ignorant on the subject.

ETA: I've now booklogged this story and the rest of the nominees in the category.

Dear Publishers,

You have inconveniently scheduled books by two of this year's Campbell nominees, Sarah Monette's The Mirador and Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies, for release too late for me to read them before voting at the end of July.

This makes me sad, because reading those books might very well make a difference in my vote. And maybe it should make you sad, because I promise to write thoughtful reviews about them, as I did for the other books by the Campbell nominees that I've read so far. (It makes my dog sad, too. Look at that sad face.) Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be happy?

I'll be glad to provide you with a mailing address, or even an e-mail address to which you could send an electronic copy—I'm not fussy, and I promise to be well-behaved.

(My motives are entirely pure, of course, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I really really want to read them. Uh-uh. Nope. Nosiree.)

Very truly yours,

(To my deep annoyance, I see that Bantam was randomly giving out 20 copies of Red Seas, the due date for entering which was—yesterday. Well, at least I've finally finished re-reading and logging Mélusine and The Virtu, and can proceed to Elantris, and then to the Hugo nominees. I'm making progress, honest . . . )

I don't really know how long it's been since I've done a life update, and so I will probably forget a boatload of stuff. On the other hand, if I've forgotten it, it probably wasn't that important.

Probably the most consequential news is my jaw. ( medical stuff, cut for length )

In other news, a friend from high school is getting married, so I've been back to Massachusetts for the shower & a bachelorette day (lunch and a spa visit. A facial is nice and all, but a massage—on a heated table—that's just bliss). If only I'd waited another week to write this, I could add the wedding to the list . . .

A while ago (err, end of April, which does put a lower limit on how long it's been since I did one of these), I was in NYC for work on a Friday, so we stayed over an extra night on our dime. We had a very lovely dinner with the Nielsen Haydens, and visited the Met on the way out. The new Greek and Roman galleries were more interesting than I expected, mostly thanks to the neat Roman wall paintings. The exhibit on Louis Comfort Tiffany's country estate has concluded, but I recommend seeing Venice and the Islamic World before it closes on July 8, because it was really excellent, full of informative and gorgeous stuff.

And I was absurdly happy to see that there was another offering of pennies at the same Ganesha statute as the last time I was there.

Anyway, the visit made me realize that I wanted a camera of my own. We have a quite good one, but it's too big for me to just toss in my purse when I go to museums, and there were a lot of things I'd have taken pictures of if I could. I have one picked out, but I'm not going to say what it is to discourage Chad from just buying it for my birthday. => (I think it's too expensive for a single-person gift and am somewhat uncouthly wanting money as gifts instead, which I can then aggregate into said camera.)

As for more recent stuff, I'm kind of behind on a lot of stuff I need to do this summer. There's reading all the Hugo [*] and Campbell nominees before it's time to vote, and re-reading the Harry Potter series before the seventh book comes out, and learning at least a little Japanese ("But I don't wanna, that's work," my subconscious whines), and getting all the logistics squared away (like what we're doing about the dog . . . ).

[*] Does anyone else use Palm's eReader and want the short fiction as nice marked-up files, complete with italics etc.? Minus the two stories only released as PDFs, that is.

And (not that it will help with getting stuff done) there will be Readercon. Woo!

Finally because I am getting tired, we saw Ocean's Thirteen today. Much better than the second, not as good as the first because ( oblique spoiler )

In response to my prior Open Letter about his unpublished novel, has posted a comment, which reads in part:

In any event, AI War is the only thing I'll be working on this summer, and once it's clean, I'm going to roll into the concluding sequel -- it's been years since I've written SF, but I am going to publish AI War and its sequel, Crystal Wind, before the people who care about it succumb to Alzheimers.

He also has a new blog at danielkeysmoran.blogspot.com.

Dear Daniel Keys Moran,

I understand that you have a completed Continuing Time novel, Players: The A.I. War, in which Trent the Uncatchable is a major character. I further understand that you've had the rights to this novel back for some time.

As someone who very nearly cries at the idea of a completed Trent novel languishing on your hard drive, may I introduce you to Lulu or Cafe Press? Both will print books from uploaded files, as they are ordered, for the price of their cost plus whatever profit you like (meaning no money up front for the author, though I understand some services are extra); both have you retain your copyright; and both are very easy. I've seen Lulu books myself and the quality is quite good.

What's more, though I am not a publishing professional, if you send me the file for Players: The A.I. War, I will undertake to turn it into a nice-looking file suitable for upload to either of these services—justified, hyphenated, numbered, and so forth. All the work done for you! (Okay, except for a cover; that's beyond my skills.)

Very truly yours,

A fan

From here (explanation; criticism of list [edit: see also my comments at the bottom of the post]).

( The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of 1953-2002 )

More interestingly: look into your crystal balls, dear readers, and predict the most significant books since 2002. I'll start: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

John M. Ford's From the End of the Twentieth Century is a 1997 anthology from NESFA Press; it overlaps only slightly with the recent Tor anthology Heat of Fusion (having in common "Preflash" and "The Lost Dialogue"). Ford died this week (many links and tributes at Making Light), and I'm writing this from memory, to complement Rachel Brown's posts about his novels (Part I, Part II (forthcoming)). As this is by way of being a memorial post, I am breaking with my tradition and cross-posting it between my booklog and LiveJournal, where my other comments were posted.

You can get an idea of the breadth of the collection, and of Ford's work generally, by reading Neil Gaiman's Introduction. As a way of organizing my own thoughts, I'm going to approach the collection by type of piece.

Essays first. The opening essay, "From the End of the Twentieth Century," is subtitled "A Discursion on Trains, Theatre, and Fantasy," which tells you a great deal about what's to come: connections all over the place, sometimes surprising ones, and an interest in approaches to storytelling. That interest is further developed in "Rules of Engagement," which considers how readers approach words on a page and provided me with a lasting metaphor for my experience as a reader: "Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight."

Trains are another interest demonstrated by the opening essay and then expanded upon, in "To the Tsiolkovsky Station: Railroads in Growing Up Weightless" (a hard sf novel set on the moon). I don't think one would need to have read Growing Up Weightless to understand the essay, as Ford sets out his assumptions and extrapolations clearly. I'm not particularly interested in trains, but I found this an interesting read.

Finally, I'm going to lump "Roadshow" in with the essays. Ford also designed role-playing games, and "Roadshow" is a scenario for a science fiction game where the players bodyguard an incredibly-famous rock band. I don't role-play and am thus not qualified to comment on whether it's a good scenario.

I'm going to pass over the song lyrics completely, because I am incapable of judging song lyrics in the absence of music. They're there; if you can read song lyrics and evaluate them, let me know what you think.

In contrast, I do have a lot to say about the poems, which is unusual because it's a genre where I'm much, much more likely to miss than to hit. But any fame Ford gained outside the SF and RPG communities was probably through his September 11 poem "110 Stories", and one of his two World Fantasy Awards was for the poem "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station" [*], so it's not just me.

[*] I suspect this was the first thing of his I read, in a Datlow-Windling Year's Best anthology. It's in Heat of Fusion and itself justifies the purchase price. (I haven't finished Heat of Fusion yet, which is why it's not here.)

One of my favorite pieces in the collection is "All Our Propogation," regarding which I can't improve on Neil Gaiman's description in his Introduction: "A prose-poem meditation on the dreams of satellites, moving and transcendentant, very high over Milk Wood."

You can read another of my favorites, "Troy: the Movie," at Strange Horizons. Obviously given the dates, it has nothing to do with Brad Pitt, but is instead an imagining of episodes from the Trojan War as movie scenes: Achilles and Hector as a Western showdown, the duel of Paris and Menelaus as a silent comedy, and so forth. It's brilliant. In a similar vein, equally as good, is "A Little Scene to Monarchize," which condenses Shakespeare's version of the War of the Roses into—well, I think they're all Gilbert and Sullivan parodies as done by Elizabethan playwrights, but I am (a) sadly ignorant of musical theater and (b) reluctant to re-read. Ford posted one section to a comment thread at Making Light (what turned out to be his last comment). Anyway, I'm sure my appreciation would be increased if I recognized all the layers of parody instead of just the top one, but Ford's writing is like that.

I have less to say about the other two poems, "The Lost Dialogue" and "Restoration Day"; I remember liking them, but they didn't hit me as hard as those three. Which, considering the length of this already, probably causes a sigh of relief rather than disappointment. Any particular partisans of those two are welcome to sing their praises in the comments.

And at last, we come to the short stories. These are a little more mixed for me, but still contain a very high percentage of things I really like. For instance, I don't usually hear "1952 Monon Freightyard Blues" talked about, but it always makes me tear up. I can't even give a coherent description of it, not having read it for a few years, but I know: always makes me tear up. So does "The Dark Companion," about an astronomer who's losing his sight. It sounds cutesy or contrived, I know, but there's no melodrama to it.

Then there are some stories I respect but don't love: "Amy, at the Bottom of the Stairs," which is another take on the death of Amy Robsart (though I suspect it, with its focus on meeting death, might read differently to me now that I know Ford expected to die young, much younger than he did); "Riding the Hammer," which is a Liavek story, and I just keep bouncing off every Liavek story I try; and "As Above, So Below", a dialogue with a dragon about paradigm shifts. And there's "Preflash," which I'm sorry to say is the one story in the collection that I don't understand. Anyone who knows what's going on is invited to comment (in ROT-13, please).

Two of the stories I quite like are retellings of much older stories, though alas to say which would spoil the plots: "Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail," which I suppose might be thought of as a trial run for The Last Hot Time, one of my favorite novels, and "Walkaway Clause," which I find particularly moving. (In retrospect, and this may just be recent preoccupations colliding, I feel it has a faint whiff of something Stephen Maturin-like. Or possibly I'm making it up.)

Another two stories, "Mandalay" and "Intersections," are linked, part of an incomplete "Alternities" series about a company that created (or found) pocket universes for vacations, until the system broke down. (Two more were written (bibliography by NESFA), and according to Neil Gaiman's Introduction another three would have completed the cycle.) They're very good, I'm getting bogged down again in contemplating the fact that there won't be any more of them, it's time to move on.

Last, there are two stories that strike me as similar in tone, first-person tales that feel somehow loose, improvisational riffs on a theme—though I suspect I wouldn't find an extraneous word. In "Waiting for the Morning Bird," our author watches a shuttle launch along with some figments of his imagination, archetypal science fiction characters. Which completely fails to do it justice, but I don't know how to. Maybe if I go on to the next one, "Scrabble with God," which is just what it sounds like:

I made OXYGEN, and got a triple word score. He made a grumbling noise. Outside, a cloud blotted out the sun . . . .

"It's oxygen," I said. "It's all around us."

He said, "You sure about that?"

I took a couple of deep breaths, just in case. (You think I'm kidding, right? Do you remember when the sky was dark with skazlorls? Double word score, fifty-point bonus, phfft. And then He challenged me on it.)

(I'm quoting this bit rather than the zweeghb bit because then I can link to Jo Walton's Skazlorls post.)

I've hand-sold a couple of copies just by handing people a copy open to this story. And if I can do the same virtually for just one person, then I will count this as a job well done.

Edit: and if you buy it and don't like it, I'll buy it from you (we had a spare which I lent to someone and am probably never getting back, so extra pimping copies would be useful).

Thinking about the Sarantine Mosaic yesterday and today reminded me of a couple of things. More SPOILERS behind the cut.

( two quick Sarantine Mosaic thoughts )

Alas, no LotR post tonight; I wrecked my wrist typing on a particularly non-ergonomic keyboard today. Tomorrow, I hope.

At the request of yhlee in comments to the Readercon structure panel report, some quick thoughts about the structure of the Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors).

This discusses the ending of the duology and contains enormous, book-destroying SPOILERS.

( Sarantine Mosaic structure, SPOILERS )

Really I shouldn't post a discussion question when I'm ferociously busy (like the last post, languishing for attention), but yhlee's post from partway into Throne of Jade prompted this thought (which is spoilery for the end of Throne) and it'll be stuck in my head all day if I don't post it:

The relationship betwen Laurence and Temeraire has been noted by many reviewers; it's primarily been the romance reviewers, that I've seen, who've pointed out that it functions the way a romance would in a romance novel. (I hasten to note, for those unfamiliar with the books, that the relationship is strictly platonic. In case people were getting their much-talked-about (for various reasons) books-with-dragons mixed up. Ahem.)

( SPOILERS for the end of Throne of Jade )

So, discuss: ways in which the first two Temeraire books play out typical romance situations through human-dragon partnerships (not limited to Laurence and Temeraire). Are these transferred situations thereby commented on or transformed in any way? Laurence's experiences in the first book (particularly) have an effect on his own perceptions about gender; are there any less obvious ways the dragon-human relationships are commenting on gender? (Or are people worn out on Tiptree-ish discussions?)

There will, of course, be spoilers for both books in comments as well as above.

I wasn't in the mood to read anything on the top of my in-pile last night, so went prowling the bookshelves for something really good that I hadn't read for a while. I knew I'd found it when just the very first sentence put me in a better mood:

The whale, the traitor; the note she left me and the run-in with the Post police; and how I felt about her and what she turned out to be—all this you know.

—Raphael Carter, The Fortunate Fall

How I wish Carter would write more fiction.

Small world-building question about the opening of Throne of Jade.

( spoilers for the first two chapters of Throne of Jade )

A chain of associations in the car tonight got me from CVS, to Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, to Steven Brust, to Vlad and Loiosh, to the following mental picture which I feel I must share with you all:

TEMERAIRE
(tilting his head to one side)
May I eat him, Laurence?

(I think Temeraire is more likely to say "May I" than "Can I," don't you?)

Shortly after that, in a very musical-range kind of way, Richard Thompson's "Beeswing" (a sad sweet slow folk song) was followed by Puddle of Mudd's "She Hates Me" (an angry hard rock song; the key line is actually "She fucking hates me," but I guess they didn't feel they could have a title that itself needed bleeping). (Though I suppose they are both about the woman who left.)

On the drive in, the unrated playlist tossed up a song from an album called "There Will Be Blood Tonight," and I walked around with Inigo Montoya's voice in my head for most of the morning.

I was thinking of suggesting a Readercon panel on the Napoleonic Wars, but realized that two data points don't constitute a trend. Besides Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and His Majesty's Dragon, are there other recent speculative fiction novels dealing with the Napoleonic Wars (as opposed to the Regency)?

Finally for tonight (having failed to debug elusive MySQL errors, again), where were you on the night of Thursday, March 30, between approximately 7:45 and 8:15 p.m.? Can you prove it? And what did you do with the sandwich?

General note: this is basically stuff I didn't know or thought someone here might be interested in.

( cut for length and/or boringness )

( Various things that caught my eye in the most recent Locus, cut for length and/or disinterest )

Right, laundry and then more drugs.