“After all, why rippers kidnapped people was the only question worth asking in today’s world.” This is how Jason Sanford’s tales work, it seems: strip the world down so that the sfnal intervention demands an answer. Like “When Thorns are the Tips of Trees”, “Here We Are …” is set in a near-future crippled by disaster. The rippers are aliens that live in darkness (“light can’t remove every shdaow”) and prey on humans, either killing them, or taking them to a terrible fate Elsewhere. Its characters are, as ever, well-sketched but cast in familiar roles, even as they are defined by Sanford’s world: the firefighter (narrator) who must go out at night, the wife who has been killed or taken by the rippers, the teenage daughter alienated (ha) as a result. In “Thorns” these elements balanced each other quite nicely; here, I think, the trick is less successful. Understanding can cast its own shadow.
Torque Control
“Sublimation Angels” by Jason Sanford
A nugget of New all swaddled in Old, that’s what this story is [pdf link]. Much of the pleasure in “Sublimation Angels” — as in Sanford’s two previous Interzone tales [more pdfs] — comes from the gentle unwinding of a satisfyingly odd setting, in thise case constructed in explicit homage to Leiber’s “A Pail of Air” (1951). Like that story, the narration is straightforward, more transparent even than Leiber (it lacks his folksiness); and, as in that story, the characters live, with very basic technology, on a wandering planet whose atmosphere has frozen. Unlike in that story, a repressive hierarchical society has arisen, based around access to oxygen.
Omare and I were born in the highest level of the cave in as much heat and good air as our expedition could give. While low kids raised their children in the lower cave’s cold, Omare and I never knew this deprivation when we were young. We only knew that our mother and father loved us, and if we climbed down the cave’s spiral tunnels we wore clumsy pails of frozen oxymix around our neck. The insulated pails contained a tiny tick-tock heater, and you cranked them every few minutes to smoke out the extra air needed to live.
What follows is about learning the world, rebelling against it, and becoming master of your own destiny. Heartwarmingly conventional stuff, if perhaps a bit stretched beyond its ideal length. But wait! There’s an ironic twist (arguably revealed very early on). It’s not just Sanford who has (like Karl Schroeder with his Virga) engineered his setting to allow its retro feel, protecting his colonists from the raw tech-dream that is the twenty-first century space opera future: one of the agents in his story has done the same thing.
So much for freedom.
Deborah Biancotti stories available to BSFA members
Deborah Biancotti has spotted that two of her stories have been nominated in the Best Short Story category, and has this offer:
If you are a kind British person &/or a member of BSFA & you’d like to read these stories, feel free to drop me a line (
deborahb AT livejournal DOT comrous AT deborahbiancotti DOT net) & I will cheerfully — very cheerfully — forward you an electronic copy of said stories. I may get a bit carried away & send you more than those two, but you’ll at least get those two stories & you can read ‘em or use ‘em for your electronic bird cages as is your wont.
So why don’t you?
BSFA Award Nominations So Far — Best Artwork
To recap, for anyone who wasn’t reading over the weekend: the deadline for nominating for this year’s BSFA Awards is this coming Saturday, 16 January. BSFA members can nominate as many items as they like in the four categories — Best Novel, Best Short Fiction, Best Non-Fiction, and Best Artwork. The five items with the most nominations in each case go forward to the final ballot.
As an aid to memory, I’ve been posting the nominations received so far in each category — that is, lists of everything that has received at least one nomination:
Today, the last of the categories: Best Artwork. Any single science fictional or fantastic image that first appeared in 2009 is eligible; to add your support to any of the works listed below, or to nominate anything else, email the BSFA Awards Administrator with details of what you want to nominate, and your membership number or postcode.
The list:
Cover of Future Bristol, ed. Colin Harvey by Andy Bigwood
Cover of The Push by Dave Hutchinson, by Andy Bigwood
Cover of The Gift of Joy by Ian Whates, by Vincent Chong
Alternate cover for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by MS Corley
Cover of The Edge of the Country and Other Stories by Trevor Denyer
Cover of Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, by Jon Foster
Cover of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three ed George Mann, by Hardy Fowler
Alternate cover for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, art project by Nitzan Klamer
Cover of The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling, by Raphael Lacoste, jacket design is by David Stephenson.
“Emerald” by Stephanie Law
Cover of Murky Depths 7, by Chris Moore
Cover of Desolation Road by Ian McDonald, by Stephan Martinière, jacket design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke.
Cover of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington, by Istan Orosz
Cover of World’s End by Mark Chadbourn by John Picacio
Cover of Eclipse 3 ed Jonathan Strahan by Richard Powers
Cover of Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher by Steve Rawlings
Cover of Twisted Metal by Tony Ballantyne, by Jon Sullivan
Cover of Xenopath by Eric Brown by Jon Sullivan
Cover of Interzone 220, by Adam Tredowski
Cover of Interzone 221, by Adam Tredowski
Cover of Interzone 224, by Adam Tredowski
Cover of Interzone 225, by Adam Tredowski
UK cover for The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, by Sam Green
Cover of Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding, by Stephan Martiniere
Cover of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, by Raphael Lacoste
Cover of Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson
Cover of Journey Into Space by Toby Litt
Cover of The Resistance by Muse
Links are to the best-quality copies of each image that I could find; if you can improve on any of them (or if you know the artist details for any of the images that are missing them) do let me know.
Preach it!
… worth considering is the comment that Martin Lewis made in an earlier post of mine. In response to a comment Aidan Moher made about how “the problem doesn’t lie with the bloggers making the list, but rather with the genre as a whole and the manner in which publishers,” Martin said, “It is pretty pathetic to abdicate all responsibility like this.” There is much truth to this. If someone is going to construct a list and presume that said list will have value to others, then that list constructor better damn well be more proactive and thus basing his/her selections on what s/he receives passively from others. While there are certainly some valid arguments that could be made to the notion that reader/reviewers have the right to choose their “favorites,” once any list is presented as reflecting any sort of “authority” (and publicly posting decade’s best list, especially those derived from several who have a privileged relationship with the publishers compared to the average reader), then those reader/reviewers have certain obligations to meet in regards to considering more than their own personal tastes if they want their lists to hold any authority and if they don’t want to be called out for putting blinders on and failing to see just how diverse and wide-ranging speculative fiction (or other genres of literature and material culture, for that matter) really is.
BSFA Award Nominations So Far — Best Short Story
Once more, with feeling: this is a list of all works that have so far received at least one nomination for this year’s BSFA Award for Best Short Story. Why not read a couple? I’m going to try to get through as many of the ones I haven’t yet read as I can by next weekend. Send additional nominations with your membership number and/or postcode, by January 16th. After that, the five with the most nominations go forward to the final ballot.
“The Best Monkey” by Daniel Abraham (The Solaris Book of New SF, Volume Three, ed. George Mann, Solaris)
“After the Revolution” by Pauline J Alama (Abyss & Apex, first quarter 2009)
“Microcosmos” by Nina Allan (Interzone 222)
Genesis by Bernard Beckett (Quercus Publishing)
“Atomic Truth” by Chris Beckett (Asimov’s, April/May 2009)
“Diamond Shell” by Deborah Biancotti (request; from A Book of Endings, Twelfth Planet Press)
“Problems of Light and Dark” by Deborah Biancotti (request; from A Book of Endings, Twelfth Planet Press)
“Ys” by Aliette de Bodard (Interzone 222)
“An Education of Scars” by Philip Brewer (Futurismic, March 2009)
Starship Fall by Eric Brown (PS Publishing)
“After the Change” by Stephanie Burgess (Future Bristol, ed Colin Harvey, Swimming Kangaroo Press)
“The Festival of Tethselem” by Chris Butler (Interzone 224)
“The Branding of Shu Mei Feng” by Amanda Clark (Daybreak, 29 November 2009)
“Re-Creations” by David L Clements (Footprints)
“Erosion” by Ian Creasey (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov 2009)
“The Certainty Principle” by Colin Davies (Asimov’s, Feb 2009)
“Tyrannia” by Alan DeNiro (Strange Horizons, 30/11/09)
“The Other Side of Life” by Ian R Faulkner (Murky Depths 10)
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster (Interzone 220)
“It Takes Two” by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse 3, ed. Jonathan Strahan)
“The Slows” by Gail Hareven (New Yorker, May)
“Fembot” by Carlos Hernandez (Daybreak, 25/12/09)
“Homeostasis” by Carlos Hernandez (Futurismic, July)
“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santiera” by Carlos Hernandez (Interfictions 2, ed. Chris Barzak and Delia Sherman)
“All the Anne Franks” by Erik Hoel (Strange Horizons, 23/11/09)
The Push by Dave Hutchinson (Newcon Press)
“Seventh Fall” by Alex Irvine (Subterranean, Summer 2009)
“Spar” by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, October 2009)
“Trembling Blue Stars” by Richard Kadrey (Flurb 7)
“A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, DPhil, MSc; or, A Lullaby” by Helen Keeble (Strange Horizons, 1/06/09 and 8/06/09)
“Galatea’s Stepchildren” by Sam S Kepfield (The Future Fire 16)
“Johnnie and Emmie-Lou Get Married” by Kim Lakin-Smith (Interzone 222)
“horrorhouse” by David D Levine (Daybreak, 30 October 2009)
“Where the Time Goes” by Heather Lindsley (Asimov’s, Oct/Nov 2009)
“Death Knocks” by Ken MacLeod (When it Changed, ed. Geoff Ryman)
“Moss Witch” by Sara Maitland (When it Changed, ed. Geoff Ryman)
“Vishnu at the Cat Circus” by Ian McDonald (in Cyberabad Days)
“A Clown Escapes from Clown-Town” by Will McIntosh (Interzone 221)
“Mother of Champions” by Sean McMullen (Interzone 224)
“Love in Another Language” by Eugene Mirabelli (Not One of Us 42)
“On the Road” b Nnedi Okorafor (Eclipse 3, ed. Jonathan Strahan)
“Silence and Roses” by Suzanne Palmer (Interzone 223)
“By Starlight” by Rebecca Payne (Interzone 225)
“Minya’s Astral Angels” by Jennifer Pelland (The Solaris Book of New SF, Volume Three, ed George Mann, Solaris)
The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough (PS Publishing)
“Troublesolving” by Tim Pratt (Subterranean, Fall 2009)
“Unexpected Outcomes” by Tim Pratt (Interzone 222)
“The Beloved Time of their Lives” by Roberto Quaglia and Ian Watson (The Beloved of my Beloved, Newcon Press; pdf link)
“The Receivers” by Alastair Reynolds (Other Earths, ed. Nick Gevers and Jay Lake)
“The Fixation” by Alastair Reynolds (The Solaris Book of New SF 3, ed. George Mann)
“Hair” by Adam Roberts (When it Changed, ed. Geoff Ryman)
“After Everything Woke Up” by Rudy Rucker (Interzone 220)
“Sublimation Angels” by Jason Sanford (Interzone 224)
“Here We Are, Falling Through Shadows” by Jason Sanford (Interzone 225)
“Lily Glass” by Veronica Schanoes (Strange Horizons, 27/04/09)
“Unrest” by Grace Seybold (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 12/03/09)
“Dog-Eared Paperback of Our Lives” by Lucius Shepard (Other Earths, ed. Nick Gevers and Jay Lake)
“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram” by Jeff Soesbe (Daybreak, 13 October 2009)
“Black Swan” by Bruce Sterling (Interzone 221)
“Palimpsest” by Charles Stross (in Wireless)
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com, March 2009)
“The Shangri-La Affair” by Lavie Tidhar (Strange Horizons, 19/01/09 and 26/01/09)
“Spiders Moon” by Lavie Tidhar (Futurismic, November 2009)
“The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew” by Catherynne M Valente (Clarkesworld, August)
“The Island” by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Eos; read online [select “chapter two”])
“Out of Time” by Jack Westlake (Murky Depths 8)
“Glitch in the System” by Ian Whates (The Gift of Joy, Newcon Press)
“Ghosts in the Machine” by Ian Whates (The Gift of Joy, Newcon Press)
"The Assistant" by Ian Whates (The Solaris Book of New SF Volume 3, ed. George Mann, Solaris)
“Infected” by Lilah Ward (Not One of Us 41)
Well, the short story club selections seem to be doing pretty well; be interesting to see if any of them make the final ballot. Surprised not to see “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” nominated yet. And I think I’ve managed to link all the stories that are online, but if I’ve missed any, let me know.
“The Festival of Tethselem” by Chris Butler
My problem with this story — in which travellers visit a distant city, at the heart of which is a mysterious artefact called The Figure of Frozen Time, which is reputed to have the power to change history; and which wants to be an elegy for time, memory, and loss, told in a formal English voice; and which looks a bit like fantasy, but is really sf — is that I keep thinking, this would be much better if Ian R MacLeod had written it. Unfair of me, I know.
“The Godfall’s Chemsong” by Jeremiah Tolbert
I enjoyed this, but then, I have a soft spot for sf stories told entirely from an alien point of view, like Tiptree’s “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” or Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Embracing-the-New”, which I suspect makes me look more kindly on “The Godfall’s Chemsong” than it really deserves. None of these stories can ever really do what they promise, obviously, but there’s a sweet spot between total incomprehensibility and humans-with-fins (or whatever) that I can’t resist.
This story errs on the side of the human, the transparent. Its aliens are undersea creatures whose world is defined by scent, and much of whose food comes as godfall, the bodies of other organisms falling from the surface. The protagonist, Muskblue, not the most successful female in her pod, encounters an unusual godfall while on her own: it is “thin, straight, only three times as long as Muskblue, with two narrow limbs at each end”. It’s a crime not to share godfall; she is banished; she finds a way to survive; she works out what this new sort of godfall means. Hard not to compare this to Helen Keeble’s “A Lullaby“, or the opening section of In Great Waters, and find it wanting; but as I say, I did enjoy it.
BSFA Award Nominations So Far — Best Non-Fiction
Per yesterday’s post, this is a list of all works that have so far received at least one nomination for this year’s BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction. This is a very open category: “any written work about science fiction and/or fantasy which appeared in its current form in 2009, in print or online” is eligible. And, as ever, send additional nominations with your membership number and/or postcode.
“Michael Bay Finally Made an Art Movie“: review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen by Charlie Jane Anders (io9, 24 June)
Powers: Secret Histories, ed. John Berlyne (PS Publishing)
Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, ed. Mark Bould and China Mieville (Wesleyan University Press)
The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould, Andrew M Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint (Routledge)
Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould, Andrew M Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint (Routledge)
Unleashing the Strange: 21st Century Science Fiction Literature by Damien Broderick (Borgo)
Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)
The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr (Wesleyan)
“I Didn’t Dream of Dragons” by Deepa D (LJ, 13 January 2009)
“Summation: 2008” by Gardner Dozois (in The Mammoth Book of New SF 22)
“Ethics and Enthusiasm” by Hal Duncan (Notes from the Geek Show, 8 June 2009)
“Alterity and Ethics” by Neil Easterbrook (in The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction)
“The Rise and Fall of the Military Techno-Thriller” by Nader Elhefnawy (IROSF, November 2009)
“Review of Orbus by Neal Asher” by Dan Hartland (Strange Horizons, 30 October 2009)
A Short History of Fantasy by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Middlesex University Press)
Imagination/Space: Essays and Talks on Fiction, Feminism, Technology and Politics by Gwyneth Jones (Aqueduct Press)
“The City is a Battlesuit for Surviving the Future” by Matt Jones (io9, 20 September 2009)
Starcombing: Columns, Essays, Reviews and More by David Langford (Wildside)
“Review of The Ask & The Answer by Patrick Ness” by Martin Lewis
“Mutant Popcorn” by Nick Lowe (Interzone)
(Strange Horizons, 17 August 2009)
The BLDGBLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh (Chronicle)
The Inter-Galactic Playground by Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)
On Joanna Russ ed. Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)
“On The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction“, by Farah Mendlesohn (in LJ community nonficawards: one, two, three, four)
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent (Spiegel & Grau; website)
“Review of Anathem by Neal Stephenson” by Adam Roberts (Punkadiddle, 2 February 2009)
“Review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by JRR Tolkien” by Adam Roberts (Strange Horizons, 6 July 2009)
Introduction to The Very Best of Gene Wolfe by Kim Stanley Robinson (PS Publishing)
Whatever by John Scalzi
“Yesterday’s Tomorrows: AE van Vogt” by Graham Sleight (Locus, August)
“Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Brian Aldiss” by Graham Sleight (Locus, December)
Quantum Sorcery by Dave Smith (Immanion Press)
Hope-in-the-Mist: the Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)
Extrapolation, Volume 50, no 2 Summer 2009: The China Mieville Special Issue, ed. Sherryl Vint
“Joanna Russ’s The Two of Them in an age of Third-Wave Feminism” by Sherryl Vint (in On Joanna Russ)
About Time 3: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who: Expanded Second Edition by Tat Wood
(Presumably following the Hugos’ lead in granting The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction extended eligibility, there.)
BSFA Award Nominations So Far — Best Novel
As I have mentioned, the deadline for nominating in this year’s BFSA Awards is nearly upon us — just over a week to go. Full details are here, but the short version is that BFSA members should send their nominations, plus membership number (or failing that, postcode), to awards@bsfa.co.uk. You can nominate in four categories — Best Novel, Best Short Fiction, Best Non-Fiction, and Best Artwork. Novels must have been published in the UK in 2009; the rest can have appeared anywhere in 2009.
Over the next four days I’m going to post the nominations received so far in each category, as a prompt to get people thinking, possibly last-minute reading, and nominating. Remember, inclusion on one of these lists means that something has received one or more nominations; the five items with the most nominations go forward to make the shortlist. You can make as many nominations as you want, so if you see something and think, oh yes, that was good, wasn’t it? — you should nominate it.
So, to start with: here’s what’s been nominated for Best Novel so far.
Twisted Metal by Tony Ballantyne (Tor UK)
Ark by Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
Transition by Iain Banks (Little, Brown)
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (William Heinemann)
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
The Accord by Keith Brooke (Solaris)
Xenopath by Eric Brown (Solaris)
The Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey (Orbit)
Fire by Kristin Cashore (Gollancz)
Generation A by Douglas Coupland (William Heinemann)
Makers by Cory Doctorow (HarperCollins)
The Other Lands by David Anthony Durham (Doubleday)
Fragment by Warren Fahy (Harper)
Nova War by Gary Gibson (Tor UK)
The Magicians by Lev Grossman (William Heinemann)
Avilion by Robert Holdstock (Gollancz)
Spirit, or, The Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones (Gollancz) [download pdf]
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (David Fickling)
Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin (Gollancz)
Journey into Space by Toby Litt (Penguin)
The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove (Solaris)
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry (Gollancz)
Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
The City & The City by China Mieville (Macmillan)
The Ask & The Answer by Patrick Ness (Walker)
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi (Picador)
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday)
Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
Book of Secrets by Chris Roberson (Angry Robot)
Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson (Harper Voyager)
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (Gollancz)
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic)
Drood by Dan Simmons (Quercus)
Far North by Marcel Theroux (Faber & Faber)
Ultrameta by Douglas Thompson (Eibonvale)
Slights by Kaaron Warren (Angry Robot)
In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield (Jonathan Cape)
One by Conrad Williams (Virgin)
Peter and Max: a Fables Novel by Bill Willingham (Titan)
Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding (Gollancz)
I confess: if “Vishnu at the Cat Circus” has received only one nomination, it is mine. I wonder whether I am the only one. (Per wordcount in the comments, it has been moved to the short fiction category.)
