Beyond Selidor

I was going to devote this week's post to the Hugo Awards situation, but to be honest, I thought better of it. Why waste my energy on the emotionally draining behaviour of a bunch of immature, selfish, cruel, destructive people? I'd rather talk about people who build, create, nurture and share.

At Safe, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz talks about words, actions, and using power for good. It's a post filled with hope and compassion. (Content note for discussion of abusive behaviour.)

Rochita's post refers to this one by Laura Mixon, which comes with a similar content note.

I absolutely adore M Sereno's poetry. Her latest, 'The Eaters, published in Uncanny Magazine, is gorgeous. Amal El-Mohtar reads it aloud here.

BBC Radio 4 is doing a programme featuring extensive interviews with Ursula Le Guin, Ursula Le Guin at 85.

Short stories I read and enjoyed this week include 'Monkey King, Faerie Queen' by Zen Cho (published at Kaleidotrope) and 'Ambergris, or the Sea-Sacrifice' by Rhonda Eikamp (published at Lackington's, illustrated by Likhain).

Over at SF Signal, authors pay tribute to Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy.

Ken Liu discusses his new novel The Grace of Kings at SF Signal.

This round-up post at Ladybusiness has some fabulous short story recommendations.

It's always disorienting for me to see real-life friends and former academic colleagues getting discussed in SF publications.

This is the most Cambridge story ever.

Please spend your weekends being lovely to each other.

This week's linkpost is up a bit early, and contains many fabulous things.

I'm a huge fan of Sophia McDougall's review of Birdman: over at Strange Horizons. In it, she compares the film to Boris Johnson. It's an apt comparison.

Here's a great interview with Samantha Shannon. 'Cities are made of narrative' indeed.

Aliette de Bodard's description of her subconscious as a library is a fabulous metaphor, and one that I might steal myself!

There's a great set of guest posts over at Ladybusiness on 'What books are on your auto-recommend list?' (For the record, mine are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, the Pagan Chronicles series by Catherine Jinks, Space Demons, Skymaze, Shinkei and Galax Arena by Gillian Rubinstein, Parkland, Earthsong, Fire Dancer and The Beast of Heaven by Victor Kelleher, the Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall and the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott.)

Episode 4 of Fangirl Happy Hour is up. This week Ana and Renay are talking Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, Jupiter Ascending and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I'm not quite as critical of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they are, while I think there's room for difference of opinion about the feminism of Jupiter Ascending, but as always, I appreciate their thoughts.

The first few guest posts about representation and diversity are up on Jim C. Hines' blog.

Shannon Hale talks about gender segregation at readings she's done at schools. It's heartbreaking.

I thoroughly enjoyed this article by Robert Macfarlane about language and landscape. Beautiful stuff.

I really liked the recent BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. This interview by Julia Raeside of Claire Foy, who played Anne Boleyn, goes a long way towards explaining why.

For reasons that will soon become apparent, although I can't provide a link to it, the #readingAuthorName hashtag on Twitter has been a powerful and positive movement. It works like this: think of an author whose works moved you and shaped you into the person you are. Tweet about it. Add the hashtag #readingAuthorName (obviously replacing AuthorName for the author's actual name). Feel happy.

It's Friday afternoon Saturday morning (and I'm mirroring this from my Wordpress blog), and that means it's high time for your weekly links. Most of these were gathered via Twitter, because I follow some fabulous people over there, and they keep finding and doing wonderful things.

A.C. Wise's monthly post for SF Signal on women to read in SFF is filled with some great recommendations. This post is part of a series, so if you want more recommendations, you'll be able to find them in the related posts links under the article.

Jim C. Hines is calling for guest posters to write on representation in SFF, so if you think you fit the criteria, you should definitely try and submit something. He's already run a previous series of posts on this subject, which were collected as an ebook, the sales of which have gone to support the Carl Brandon Society's Con or Bust programme. The call for guest posts runs until today, so get in now if you want to be included.

I'm really looking forward to Aliette de Bodard's new Xuya short story. She's posted an excerpt on her blog.

This post by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz about the struggles people face when trying to speak up (or even speak at all) is powerful and important.

Kate Elliott's short-story collection The Very Best of Kate Elliott is out on the 10th February. She's been blogging up a storm recently. I particularly appreciated her guest post at The Book Smugglers on self-rejection and the courage tosay yes.

Also from Kate Elliott, 'An Illustrated Love Letter to Smart Bitches and Trashy Books', which does exactly what it says on the tin. I'm not a regular reader of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (which recently celebrated its tenth birthday), but I am a firm believer in unapoletically loving the things you love, and not shaming other people for their fannish choices, so this resonated with me a lot.

This guest post on Ladybusiness by forestofglory is full of great short-fiction recommendations that I will definitely be checking out.

Finally, I went on a bit of a Twitter spree about cultish behaviour and abuse dynamics in fandom. These tweets should be considered the preliminary stage of a more detailed post that I've been thinking about for a while. Charles Tan was kind enough to collect my tweets together on Storify.

Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy Armenian teenager Vika Ogannesyan singing 'Plava Laguna' (the opera song from The Fifth Element).

Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!

Today, I'd like to close off this meme with a recommendation. If you like stories about women, if you like to focus on relationships between girls and women that are collaborative and compassionate, rather than antagonistic and competitive, if you are sick of the way fandom (and the world at large) elevates individual women by tearing other women down, go to ladybusiness. There you will find excellent commentary, so many book, TV show and film recommendations that you won't know what to buy next, and a welcoming, friendly community. They also run a sideblog on Tumblr called thefriendshipzone, which focuses on instances of female friendship.

Honestly, ladybusiness was my find of the year. I am so happy it exists. When I am talking about women's stories, and about feminism, that is what I mean.

So, this happened:



I'm not one of those people who turns into an awestruck, quivering heap whenever one of their most admired authors speaks to them, and in any case, I've spoken to Kate Elliott quite a few times before on Twitter or in blog comments (including in comments on one of my reviews of this very series), and she's always been very friendly. However, it is pleasing when an author's understanding of her work lines up with my own.

This recent Twitter conversation was sparked off by a great conversation I was having with renay over on ladybusiness, where she and Jodie had posted their joint review of Spirit Gate, the first book in the Crossroads series. It always makes me very happy to see people discussing this series, as to my mind, it's Elliott's best, and is often neglected by reviewers in favour of her other work (all of which is also fantastic, but didn't speak to me in quite the same way).

This recent flurry of Crossroads discussion has prompted me to post links to my two reviews of the series, which were written quite a while ago, but may spark more discussion. Here's the review of Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate, which is fairly light on spoilers.

[I]t reflects a more accurate understanding of how mercantile societies operated, and how such societies might’ve reacted to conflict and war. Mai is a fabulous character, principled yet pragmatic, outwardly restrained but gifted at speaking persuasively when the need arises. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a character in a fantasy novel who appealed to me so much, and it’s been an even longer time since I’ve read a fantasy novel where all elements of the imagined society rang so true.

Here is the (more spoiler-heavy) review of the final book, Traitor's Gate. I would not advise reading it unless you've finished the series.

( Cut for spoilers )

I'd love to hear the thoughts of anyone who's finished the series.