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Well, I certainly won't get all the award nominees read BEFORE the awards are announced, but I guess I never said that was my goal, per se. And, the year is long... which is good, because yet another award was announced yesterday. The Lambda Literary Award, which is for GLBT fiction in general, but which I include because it has a speculative fiction category. This year's finalists for the SF/F/Horror Lambda are:
LGBT SF/F/HORROR
Afterparty, Daryl Gregory, Tor Books
Bitter Waters, Chaz Brenchley, Lethe Press
Butcher’s Road, Lee Thomas, Lethe Press
Child of a Hidden Sea, A. M. Dellamonica, Tor Books
Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone, Tor Books
FutureDyke, Lea Daley, Bella Books
Skin Deep Magic, Craig Laurance Gidney, Rebel Satori Press
Tor Books (a major, traditional NY publisher) is well represented. More men* on this list, but I'm very excited that I have an excuse to hunt down my friend Alyx Dellamonica's book, Child of a Hidden Sea. Out of 7, only 2 are easily identified as women. But, of course, for Tempest's challenge they would have all qualified because they are (presumed) part of the queer community in one way or another.
Also, how could anybody not want to read a book called FutureDyke??
Last night, I got about 50 pages into Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. Leckie is a writer that we argued about a little on my FB feed because, at one point, we were trying to list women who wrote "hard" science fiction. I suppose you could split a hair with a molecule slicer, and say, no, this is technically space opera, but there are AI/cyborgs and space ships. I don't know how much more skiffy you need your SF.
The book I'm reading is actually the sequel to Ancillary Justice, which I started last year and ... well, while I didn't exactly bounce out of it, I didn't precisely stick to it, either. I bet I read a little under a hundred pages before it was due back at the library and I returned it, mostly unread. Leckie's first book, for me, was a little too... "unanchored"? I'm not sure what word I want here, but the first fifty/eighty pages felt unfocused and not connected to the physical in a way in which I find I really need when being introduced to a completely strange and new world. Part of the strangeness of Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword is that the AI/cyborg POV character (as well of all of society), use one pronoun to describe every gender and that pronoun is "she."
As I said in an earlier post about this, dealing with the labeling of all as "she" really underscores the point that using the generalized 'he' as we do in our modern society doesn't work the way we think it does. It's not as universal as we've been led to believe.
I am a she, and yet I find myself wondering who REALLY is, and who isn't. (Sometimes there are clues, "her beard was long and thick," but then, particularly in the first book where the ancillary was traveling from world to world--I think, or, this is an alien and their female aliens can grow beards... beards might be ceremonial or....?)
Then I usually stop to wonder, why does it even matter? Why does it throw me so much to not KNOW?
I think I'm fairing better in this book, because I've accepted she as the norm. Until a penis actually makes an appearance, I've decided that everyone in the book is a woman... or a man. It really has stopped mattering to me to some extent, though I still find myself looking for clues. Luckily, Leckie knows I am and has been sure to make it impossible. Okay, so the Fifth Seat is really concerned about the dishes and the appropriateness of protocol, but that's "her" job as aide/adjutant. That certainly doesn't make her default female any more than anyone else, does it?
It's fascinating.
Ancillary Sword, too, in my opinion, seems to be written with the confidence of a second novel, and so I feel more anchored for whatever reason (or, maybe, it's only in comparison to the very, VERY trippy books I read previous to this one.)
The other book I have but haven't started yet (I'm a monogamous reader: my mildly dyslexic brain can only deal with one book/story at a time) is This Shattered World which is the only book I've found so far that's up for an Aurealis (the Australian SF award) AND I found it in Roseville Library's YA section... the book jacket makes the plot sound eerily like one I proposed to my former editor when she asked me for some military SF. (Honestly? I will admit I checked the publisher, but, of course it's not the same. There's just nothing new under the sun.)
And.. now I have another whole list to start hunting for!!
LGBT SF/F/HORROR
Afterparty, Daryl Gregory, Tor Books
Bitter Waters, Chaz Brenchley, Lethe Press
Butcher’s Road, Lee Thomas, Lethe Press
Child of a Hidden Sea, A. M. Dellamonica, Tor Books
Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone, Tor Books
FutureDyke, Lea Daley, Bella Books
Skin Deep Magic, Craig Laurance Gidney, Rebel Satori Press
Tor Books (a major, traditional NY publisher) is well represented. More men* on this list, but I'm very excited that I have an excuse to hunt down my friend Alyx Dellamonica's book, Child of a Hidden Sea. Out of 7, only 2 are easily identified as women. But, of course, for Tempest's challenge they would have all qualified because they are (presumed) part of the queer community in one way or another.
Also, how could anybody not want to read a book called FutureDyke??
Last night, I got about 50 pages into Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. Leckie is a writer that we argued about a little on my FB feed because, at one point, we were trying to list women who wrote "hard" science fiction. I suppose you could split a hair with a molecule slicer, and say, no, this is technically space opera, but there are AI/cyborgs and space ships. I don't know how much more skiffy you need your SF.
The book I'm reading is actually the sequel to Ancillary Justice, which I started last year and ... well, while I didn't exactly bounce out of it, I didn't precisely stick to it, either. I bet I read a little under a hundred pages before it was due back at the library and I returned it, mostly unread. Leckie's first book, for me, was a little too... "unanchored"? I'm not sure what word I want here, but the first fifty/eighty pages felt unfocused and not connected to the physical in a way in which I find I really need when being introduced to a completely strange and new world. Part of the strangeness of Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword is that the AI/cyborg POV character (as well of all of society), use one pronoun to describe every gender and that pronoun is "she."
As I said in an earlier post about this, dealing with the labeling of all as "she" really underscores the point that using the generalized 'he' as we do in our modern society doesn't work the way we think it does. It's not as universal as we've been led to believe.
I am a she, and yet I find myself wondering who REALLY is, and who isn't. (Sometimes there are clues, "her beard was long and thick," but then, particularly in the first book where the ancillary was traveling from world to world--I think, or, this is an alien and their female aliens can grow beards... beards might be ceremonial or....?)
Then I usually stop to wonder, why does it even matter? Why does it throw me so much to not KNOW?
I think I'm fairing better in this book, because I've accepted she as the norm. Until a penis actually makes an appearance, I've decided that everyone in the book is a woman... or a man. It really has stopped mattering to me to some extent, though I still find myself looking for clues. Luckily, Leckie knows I am and has been sure to make it impossible. Okay, so the Fifth Seat is really concerned about the dishes and the appropriateness of protocol, but that's "her" job as aide/adjutant. That certainly doesn't make her default female any more than anyone else, does it?
It's fascinating.
Ancillary Sword, too, in my opinion, seems to be written with the confidence of a second novel, and so I feel more anchored for whatever reason (or, maybe, it's only in comparison to the very, VERY trippy books I read previous to this one.)
The other book I have but haven't started yet (I'm a monogamous reader: my mildly dyslexic brain can only deal with one book/story at a time) is This Shattered World which is the only book I've found so far that's up for an Aurealis (the Australian SF award) AND I found it in Roseville Library's YA section... the book jacket makes the plot sound eerily like one I proposed to my former editor when she asked me for some military SF. (Honestly? I will admit I checked the publisher, but, of course it's not the same. There's just nothing new under the sun.)
And.. now I have another whole list to start hunting for!!
