A quick thought on Game of Thrones

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Cora

Just watched the first episode of season three of Game of Thrones.

Tywin Lannister really is determined to win the unofficial Darth Vader Parenthood Award for the second year in a row, isn’t he?

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Some Reflections on Recent Awards and Nominations

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Cora

The past week has been a good one for awards and nominations, because the shortlists and winners for several more or less prestigious awards have been announced.

First of all, the nominations for the 2013 Hugo Awards have been announced. This is another good year for genre diversity, for there are several women writers and writers of colour among the nominees in the various fiction categories. There even is a women among the nominees in the best pro-artist category, which is a first as far as I know. The best fan writer category remains mainly male dominated, but at least we have one female nominee in Tansy Rayner Roberts.

The best novel category looks like a good selection. Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold is my personal favourite of the bunch (But oh, that cover! Not just awful, but whitewashed, too). I haven’t read Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed yet, but I’ve heard many good things about it. Besides, here we have a muslim writer getting a Hugo nomination for an Arabian based fantasy novel, which is reason enough in itself to rejoice. John Scalzi is immensely popular, not least because of his massively popular blog, plus Redshirts is funny and plays on geek tropes. Come to think of it, both Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and Redshirts are definitely on the lighter side of the genre spectrum, which is interesting given the current grimdark debate. 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson strikes me as exactly the kind of book Hugo voters will like, though Robinson has never personally done it for me. For me, the only baffling choice is the Mira Grant novel. Now I like Seanan McGuire’s urban fantasy quite a bit, but her Mira Grant books strike me as exactly the sort of run-of-the-mill zombies/biohazard/killer virus technothriller I avoid in any incarnation.

I can’t really comment on the merit of the individual works in the three short fiction categories, since I haven’t read any of them. However, I’m pleased to see Jay Lake and Aliette de Bodard nominated. Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is represented with another three stories, too. And while Catherynne Valente’s work is not my cup of tea at all, I know she’s popular. It’s also interesting that several of the nominated stories (Aliette de Bodard’s On a Red Station, Drifting and Immersion as well as Ken Liu’s Mono No Aware, maybe others as well) feature non-western settings and characters. Finally, we only have three nominated short stories, because no others managed to capture more than five percent of total nominations, which might indicate either a very weak year for short fiction or an extremely wide and varied field of nominations.

The short fiction categories also show how the publishing landscape is changing, because only one of the nominated works in the three short fiction categories was published in one of the established big three print SF magazines. Clarkesworld and Tachyon Publications have produced several nominees, a couple come from anthologies, while most of the nominees in the novella category are standalone publications, something that was extremely rare before e-books made standalone novellas feasible. Plus – drumroll – we finally have the first self-published Hugo nominee in Seanan McGuire’s In Sea-Salt Tears. Come to think of it, On a Red Station, Drifting might be indie published as well, even though there is a publisher imprint listed. Given the rules, it was always obvious that the Hugos would probably be the first major award to open towards indie published works, since indies have never been explicitly excluded, unlike with other major genre awards. Though I actually expected someone like Hugh Howey to kick open the doors of the Hugos for indiedom, it probably makes more sense that a hybrid author would be the first.

The related works category looks pretty good. My favourite would be The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, but then I’m biassed towards academic reflections on the genre. The Chicks Dig series is pretty popular and garners two nominations this year. I can’t comment on the Martin Greenberg book and the nomination of the Writing Excuses podcast in this category just baffles me, because shouldn’t it go in the podcast category.

The long form dramatic presentation category includes the usual blockbusters – Cabin in the Woods is the only surprise here. The domination of Doctor Who in the short form dramatic presentation category continues with three nominated Doctor Who episodes. There’s also one Game of Thrones episode and one Fringe episode nominated. I’ve hoped for years that something other than Doctor Who would finally be nominated in this category, especially since Doctor Who has declined pretty severely IMO. And I can’t argue with Game of Thrones, but Fringe? Honestly? Fringe is the best genre TV you could come up with? Though to be fair, there is very little good genre TV around these days. Being Human has shot past annoyance into “This crap is still on?” territory, Misfits is no longer as good as it used to be and Supernatural mainly seems to survive due to fanfic people. True Blood is still on, but no one is watching, ditto for Vampire Diaries. What is more, the UK – which in recent years has been the most reliable source of innovative genre TV – seems to be mainly focussing on nostalgia dripping period dramas designed to appeal to the Downton Abbey fan of late. So really, what is there to nominate aside from Doctor Who and Game of Thrones?

I can’t comment in the other categories, since I’m not familiar enough with them. The Campbell award shortlist just continues to baffle me, ditto for most of the best fan writer nominees.

The shortlist for another major genre award was announced this week as well, for the nominations for the 2013 Rita and Golden Heart awards have been announced. I have read only three of the nominated books, namely Lothaire by Kresley Cole, Rogue Rider by Larissa Ione as well as the annual J.D. Robb. Though it’s interesting to see several e-book first/only imprints like Carina Press or Loveswept represented as well as Amazon’s Montlake Romance imprint. No self-published nominees, but then the Ritas aren’t open to self-published works yet. And talking of which, it’s probably time to revamp the Golden Heart contest for the best unpublished books, because in the current publishing climate they’ll probably run out of nominees soon, because the sort of books that would once have been submitted for the Golden Heart are now increasingly being self-published.

More awards: The winners of the 2013 BSFA awards have been announced this weekend as well. The shortlist as well as the winners here are heavily male dominated. I can’t comment on the winning novel, Jack Glass by Adam Roberts, though the cover (also a winner) is great. The awards nod for the World SF Blog is well deserved, though.

Yet more awards: The winner(s) of the 2013 Philip K. Dick award was announced this weekend as well. I really can’t comment, since I have never even heard of either book.

Finally, the winners of the 2013 Adolf-Grimme Awards, supposedly the most renown German TV award, have been announced as well with predictably horrible results (The Grimme awards are mainly renown for rewarding bloody depressing TV). In the fiction category, the winners are a TV movie about a mother who commits suicide, another TV movie about a marital rape (or was it?), yet another TV movie about a real life kidnapping case that is mainly remembered because the police investigators in charge decided to ignore the inconvenient fact that Germany has a constitution and threatened to torture the suspect (didn’t help, the kidnapped child was dead anyway and very few people even dared to say that what the police did was wrong), a TV series on a tiny pay-TV cable channel that no one watches and a TV mini-series about annoying bourgeois people in Communist East Germany based on an equally annoying family saga which won the German book award (renown for rewarding family sagas with historical background) a few years ago. The non-fiction winners include documentaries about children dying of leukaemia, a black German boxer facing racism, a Stasi informer, the end of Communism and young people from an immigrant background in Germany. In the entertainment category, “entertainment” meaning “not bloody depressing” in this context, the winners are an episode of series about crime scene cleaners and a parody of the popular German game show Wetten Dass? (Wanna bet?). If I ever needed confirmation about the sorry state of German TV, the Grimme awards provide it in spades.

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Happy Snowy Easter

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Cora

This is the view from my front door at seven AM today. Now, it’s not Christmas but Easter morning. In fact, Christmas was warmer and much greener than this.

Snowy Easter 2013

Try finding some Easter eggs on the snowy meadow. Though given how cold it is, maybe the Easter bunny opted to stay home instead.

Snowy Easter

Pristine snow on an Easter Sunday morning. Not even the drunkards staggering home from last night’s Easter fire have marred it.

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More grimdark fantasy, boring literary fiction, the truth about the Amityville horror and cheese – it’s a Good Friday linkdump

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Cora

We’re actually having snow for Easter this year, though at least the cold means that there’s no need to open the windows and that I’ll be spared the smoke from the annual Easter fire, a tradition I don’t mind, as long as it’s not held 500 meters from my home with the wind blowing the smoke into my bedroom window. I could also live without drunkards partying noisily around the fire till two or three in the morning.

Meanwhile, the grimdark debate is still ongoing. First of all, Joshua S. Hill offers his contribution at Amazing Stories, basically repeating a point that has been made before by Sam Sykes and Elizabeth Bear among others, namely that grit and darkness are fine, as long as they’re tempered by light and hope. This is a point I can get behind. Unfortunately, the rest of the post is rather flawed.

For starters, Hill only links to the contributions of Sam Sykes, Richard Morgan and the original Joe Abercrombie post, but not to a single post by critics of grimdark fantasy nor a single post by a woman, even though some of the best contributions in this debate were made by women. The list of writers of gritty fantasy cited doesn’t include any women either, but then we’re used to that by now.

Worse, critics of grimdark fantasy are called “hyperventilating religious wackjobs” and vitriolic “morons”. Now of all the critics of grimdark fantasy that have appeared in this and previous go-arounds, only Leo Grin and Bryan Thomas Schmidt as well as Theo/Vox Day and possibly Tom Simon have been religiously motivated. And Grin, Theo/Vox Day* and Schmidt weren’t even involved in this year’s go-around. And the only ones who might be considered to meet the definition of hyperventilating wackjob are Leo Grin and Theo/Vox Day – Tom Simon’s and Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s contibutions were considered and well-reasoned. However, the most common criticism of grimdark fantasy is not “This offends my moral and religious sensibilities” but “Your ‘realistic’ view of the past is selectively racist and sexist and by the way, real history wasn’t so clearcut as your ‘nuanced’ approximation of it with added magic and dragons and zombies”. As for “morons”, the only moronic posts during this go-around came from the pro-grimdark camp, which also did a lot of hyperventilating and wackjobbing. So in short, the Amazing Stories post missed much of the current discussion, probably because the places where said discussion has been held are not on Joshua Hill’s radar.

C.P.D. Harris also offers another take on the ongoing debate over the state of the (epic) fantasy genre and wonders whether fantasy’s great divide is not between grimdark and Pollyana-ish fantasy at all, but between fate and causality driven fantasy. I’m not sure I agree with him, especially since purely fate or prophecy driven stories are very rare these days. Even the whole self-fulfilling prophecy trope, which lies behind everything from Oedipus to Terminator, is actually a play with casuality, where attempts to prevent the prophecy from coming true cause the prophecy to come true. Still, it’s a very interesting post.

At Salon, J. Robert Lennon claims that “literary fiction is fucking boring”. Behind the inflammatory headline is actually an interesting article which exhorts all writers to not just stick to a single genre and only the most recent works in said genre at that, but to read widely and across genre lines, to read non-fiction, watch films and TV shows and generally seek for information and inspiration everywhere. And that’s great advice, whether you write romance or mysteries, SF or fantasy, westerns or literary fiction.

BTW, J. Robert Lennon wrote the short story upon which the TV show Unforgettable is based, which means that he isn’t a purely literary writer either.

Grady Hendrix has an interesting post about the truth behind the Amityville horror, that quintessential “true” haunted house story from the 1970s and the source of dozens of official and unofficial adaptions. Found via SF Signal. Turns out the hauntings were faked by the parents to make money and the only actual horror going on was the abuse of the three children by their stepfather.

The Telegraph reports that Stilton cheese may be under threat in its native Britain. Apparently, younger Britons are refusing to eat Stilton, because they’ve been taught that mold is bad for you. However, blue cheese is supposed to be moldy, duh. Honestly, how can anybody not know this? Though it would be interesting to see whether other blue cheeses or even Camembert or Brie (What do you think the white rind is?) experience similar market share losses in the UK or if it’s just Stilton. Because this might just be a case of younger people not eating the same cheeses their parents like. I don’t even exclude myself there. For example, my Mom loves Limburger cheese. I never eat it, even though I like strong flavoured cheeses, because IMO Limburger is old-fashioned and kind of boring, like the food your parents eat.

Though in general, this is sad, because I really like Stilton. I discovered it as a student in London, when the only blue cheeses available at the local supermarket were Cambozola, Danablu and Stilton. I found both Cambozola and Danablu rather dull, preferring Roquefort and Gorgonzola. So I finally decided to try the Stilton and lo and behold, it was really good. I recently found a local supermarket that carries Stilton and occasionally buy a slice, to be consumed with pickle and maybe a glass of sherry.

*Probably too busy campaigning to become SFWA president.

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A Birthday on a Snowy Holy Thursday

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Cora

Today was Holy Thursday. It was also, coincidentally, my Mom’s birthday. And, as the weather forecast had foretold, it was snowing intermittently, though the snow didn’t stick until temperatures dropped below freezing in the evening.

We celebrated my Mom’s birthday by having lunch at a really good local Italian restaurant, which I just noticed has a totally unfair one star review at one of those restaurant review sites. Just because the interior design is a bit dated (which it is), doesn’t mean that the food can’t be good. And unlike Amazon, that site doesn’t even allow you to downvote unhelpful reviews.

We ordered a big antipasto platter (which turned out to be three separate platters) to share among all the guests. Afterwards, I had penne with scampi in tomato garlic prosecco sauce, which was one of the daily specials. Other guests ordered pizza and the grilled liver, which is one of the restaurant’s specialties.

Anyway, here are some photos behind the cut: Continue reading →

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“Still Bloody Cold” Linkdump

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Cora

Well, it is. Tomorrow, there’s even supposed to be snow again. On Maundy Thursday.

If you’ve been hanging around this or my other blogs, you may have noticed a few changes. First of all, my posts now have a “Like” button, where you can “like” posts right here on the site rather than at Facebook. There’s also a “Send to Kindle” button under every post, which allows you to send a longer post straight to your Kindle to read at your leisure. Since I don’t have a Kindle, I can’t test it (and there is no equivalent “Send to Kobo” button), but I hope it works.

Talking of my other blogs, over at the ABC Buhlert blog, I have a new post about the problem of anti-windpower prejudice.

Swan Tower a.k.a. Marie Brennan provides another contribution to the ongoing discussion on grimdark fantasy and states that there are actually three different though intertwined discussions going on here, namely whether gritty “realism” is superior to non-gritty and supposedly less realistic works, whether gritty and dark automatically equals grimdark and how one can portray the uglier sides of reality and history without sliding into reflexive racism and misogyny.

At the Irish Times, Gareth L. Powell theorizes about the future of science fiction, which is according to him lies in crossgenre hybrid works. Found via SF Signal. What I find particularly interesting about this article is that many of the authors and works mentioned happen to be published by Angry Robot.

The Atlantic offers an appreciation of Cordwainer Smith who would have been 100 this year. I particularly found the potential link between Cordwiner Smith and the psychoanalyst’s patient who believed he was an alien fascinating.

Slate has a fascinating article about Lew Wallace, a formar Civil War general who is nowadays best remembered as the author of Ben Hur. I read Ben Hur way back when I was doing a class on historical fiction of the 19th century (and have actually seen the silent film version rather than the Charlton Heston version which is a TV staple on the Easter weekend – The silent Ben Hur is marvelous BTW. Erté costumes and early colour!), but I didn’t know about the author’s background in the US Civil War.

Juliette Wade talks about neologisms in SF at Jamie Todd Rubin’s blog. I once wrote a linguistic paper about the same subject. Only in German alas.

Talking of linguistics and speculative fiction, Kate Elliott has an extensive post about developing a creole for Cold Fire at her blog.

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“It’s really cold for spring” Linkdump

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Cora

Well, it’s true. Because temperatures of six degrees below freezing really aren’t normal for March. Plus, we haven’t had any rain in weeks now.

Anyway, here are some links:

First of all, there’s yet another entry in the Grimdark debate, for Swan Tower a.k.a. Marie Brennan wonders what gritty and grimdark actually mean and why female writers are so rarely mentioned when gritty and/or grimdark fiction is discussed, even if women absolutely write gritty and dark fantasy, though the utter hopelessness of grimdark seems to be more of a male thing.

The Atlantic has an interesting article about romance novels and feminism. For an article about romance fiction in the mainstream press, this one is surprisingly nuanced and free of condescension, though the usual “It’s all just porn for women” crap pops up in the comments, usually by men who have never read a single romance novel.

Talking of sex in fiction, the Observer celebrates the 1980s bestseller Lace, which was something like the Fifty Shades of Grey of its day (and featured goldfish as sex toys!) and has now been reissued for its 30th anniversary, and interviews Lace author Shirley Conran. Turns out Shirley Conran was something of an early feminist and used to be married to Terrence Conran, the founder of the Habitat chain.

The Observer also has a tie-in article offering a history of the “bonkbuster” (i.e. novels by female writers which shock the public by containing – gasp – sex and go on to be bestsellers), which includes such old favourites as Forever Amber (which is actually a cracking good historical novel, though the sex is quite tame by modern standards), Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls. Though they forgot Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying.

At Publishing Perspectives, Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann praises his English translator Carol Janeway, who is also a publishing executive at Alfred A. Knopf and translates in her sparetime. What I find particularly interesting about Kehlmann’s praise of Carol Janeway’s work is the paragraph about academic translation, since apparently translators were instructed to stick as closely to the original wordchoice and syntax as possible. And if the text sounds clumsy as a result – well, translated texts aren’t supposed to sound like texts written by native speakers anyway. This shocked me, because I’ve honestly never heard this. Now most translation classes offered at German universities are geared towards technical, legal and business rather than literary translators and technical, legal and business translation indeed has different requirements than literary translation. But I know a couple of literary translators and all of them strive to make the translated text sound natural, while trying to retain as much of the author’s voice as possible. Maybe “Make it sound stilted and unnatural” was an anglophone only thing. It would certainly explain why translated fiction is so unpopular in English speaking countries and why the few translated books that become popular such as Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy are often blasted for their clumsy writing. For I have long suspected that the alleged clumsy writing of Stieg Larsson is in fact an issue with the English translation, since I’ve never heard any complaints about Larsson’s writing in Germany.

It’s plagiarism season again. A reviewer claims to have detected plagiarised passages in Seeds of Hope, a new non-fiction book by world famous primatologist Jane Goodall and her co-author Grace Hudson.

Matt Smith, who plays the current Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, is said to be leaving Doctor Who in the 2013 Christmas special. The BBC hasn’t confirmed anything yet, though I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact, I expected Matt Smith (and hopefully Steve Moffatt) to leave after the 50th anniversary special in November.

Finally, I’ve got reason to brag, because my fantasy novelette The Hidden Castle is a number 1 bestseller at Amazon. Okay, so it’s only Amazon France, but I’m still pleased. For more information, see this post at the Pegasus Pulp blog.

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It’s still very grimdark out there

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Cora

Even though I’ve been away for a few days, the blogosphere or at least the SFF corner of the blogosphere hasn’t moved on yet, since we’re still discussing grimdark fantasy. So here is a round-up of the latest entries in the discussion. All the best entries are by women incidentally:

Warning: There will be some spoilers as well as potentially triggery discussion of sexual violence below, so proceed with caution. Continue reading →

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Too Funny Not To Share

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Cora

Today I was in Bremen and spotted this:

Graffiti Grolland Bremen

Graffiti at the tram stop Norderländer Straße in Bremen.
Doesn’t he look like the unholy love child of Gollum and the Red Skull?

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Halle Photos

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Cora

And now, as promised, photos of my recent trip to Halle on Saale Lots of beautiful old buildings and some not so beautiful examples of Communist era architecture. Some of the photos were taken while snow was falling and thus look a little grey and grim.

On YouTube I found this home video showing Halle in the spring of 1990, i.e. a few months after the fall of the Wall. And here is another home movie of Halle, shot in 1981. The city here looks very much like I remember it. Here is another home movie that’s even older, filmed by an American searching his roots in Halle in 1969. You can even see Halle Neustadt under construction. The videos show some of the same locations I photographed 23 to 44 years later, so it’s interesting to compare and contrast. Continue reading →

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