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On the side of the ogres and pixies

March 10, 2015 /

Ishiguro.buriedgiantMost people with even a passing interest in what we care to call the politics of genre will have been aware of the recent pseudo-spat between Ursula Le Guin and Kazuo Ishiguro. I say pseudo-spat because that’s exactly what it was. Le Guin reacted to something Ishiguro never said, or rather, he didn’t say it in quite the way she thought he meant it (he explains himself here). Two days later she apologises for any offence she might have caused, and then admonishes Ishiguro for taking her own words in vain. “Many sites on the Internet were quick to pick up my blog post, describing it as an “attack”, a “slam”, etc,” she says. “They were hot on the scent for blood, hoping for a feud. I wonder how many will pick up this one?”

Le Guin may have been a little hasty in ‘flying off the handle’, as she herself put it, but she is certainly justified in her assessment and condemnation of internet blood-lust. As Le Guin suggests, these kind of clickbait articles are annoying and pointless and increasingly tedious precisely because they polarise opinion so swiftly and so absolutely they shut off the opportunity for a more in-depth debate. Read what they’ve actually said and it’s quite obvious that Le Guin and Ishiguro have far more in common than divides them, and I for one would love to see a conversation between them in which they could discuss, as Le Guin suggested, the fictional validity of dragons versus pixies (and I’d lay money on Ishiguro being up for it, too). But then, so far as the internets is concerned at least, informed and reasoned discussion isn’t anywhere near as thrilling as gladiatorial combat.

Far from being dismissive, Ishiguro’s views on the uses of fantasy would appear to be cogent, inclusive and sophisticated.  In the original New York Times interview that sparked all the fuss, Ishiguro states the ‘barren, weird England’ of his fictional Dark Ages provides an ideal metaphorical landscape for the story of moral evasion and wilful forgetting he wanted to explore. In another interview for The Guardian, he explains his own magic system straightforwardly and without prevarication: “I didn’t want a fantasy world where anything weird could happen. I went along with what happened in the Samurai tales I grew up on. If it’s conceivable that the people of the time had these superstitions or beliefs, then I would allow it.”

I would say Ishiguro totally gets what fantasy is for and what it can do. So why the disinclination, in certain quarters, to admit that, even as a possibility?

The longlist for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced at midnight last night. It’s an odd one. It includes a number of books – historical, social-realist fiction – of the kind that I find least interesting, at least in outline. (Personally I much preferred Naomi Frisby’s hypothetical line-up at The Writes of Woman which, just in case you haven’t discovered it yet, is one of the best book blogs around.) But the list does include some outstanding writers (Ali Smith, Rachel Cusk, Xiaolu Guo, Grace McCleen) and it also includes six novels that are either blatantly speculative, or that contain strong speculative elements. Looking down the longlist for the first time, I found myself wondering whether novels such as Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Laline Paull’s The Bees, or Sandra Newman’s The Country of Ice Cream Star (I’m a big Station Eleven fan, but seeing The Bees and Ice Cream Star here pleases me especially because these two books have been excluded from SFF discussions more or less entirely) would have stood a chance of being selected even a decade ago. Does the appearance of such books here now signal a genuine shift in literary attitudes towards the leitmotifs (see, I’m deliberately eschewing the word ‘tropes’) and preoccupations of science fiction and fantasy, as Ishiguro seems to suggest, as Le Guin appears so reluctant to believe?

I don’t know if this question has an answer yet. But it’s worth putting out there.

Other doors than these

March 1, 2015 /

I came across this interesting post earlier today, in which book blogger David Hebblethwaite explains most eloquently how paper books will, for him, always trump the ebook as a reading experience:

When I open a print book, it is like stepping through a doorway, into the world of the book. Whatever distractions there may be from outside, it is ultimately just me and the book, and I have the whole text – its whole world – before me… If reading a print book is like opening a door, using an ereader to me is like peering through a hole. With a printed text, I can feel that I have the whole book in my hands. With the ereader, I have a single page (or page fragment) in front of me at any one time; I can’t flick so easily back and forth through the book; and an electronic page or percentage count give me a less intuitive sense of where I am in the book than holding a physical volume.

David goes on to explain how with an ereader he finds himself ‘focusing much more on the isolated moment, less so on the context’. I’ve heard this argument rehearsed before, or variants of it – that the ereader encourages a cursory, somehow surface reading, and that the experience, once completed, leaves no residue. Take this piece in The Independent for example:

One study showed that in a group reading the same book, e-readers had a lower plot recall, which was credited to a lack of “solidity”. When we can’t see the pile of pages growing on the left and shrinking on the right, the book is, apparently, less fixed for us.

I would once have sided with these kind of arguments absolutely. I have enjoyed a passion for physical books literally for as long as I can remember. Like many devoted readers, I can remember individual copies of specific books right back to my nursery school days. I feel saddened, even now, when I think of the way many of our public libraries have been semi-denuded of actual books, those heavy, plastic-jacketed hardbacks so particular to libraries, rank upon rank of them, with their particular, magical smell, the weight of them in your arms as you queued up at the desk to have them stamped and then hugged them to your chest as you carried them home. All memories, all precious. For me, the text of a book has often allied itself almost seamlessly with the physical substance of a particular copy – the book is the book, if you like, a form of imagic identification that I would venture to suggest attaches itself to books and books alone.

Because books are magic. I’m not ashamed to say it and I hope I never will be. I’m also one of those people who still buys CDs because I like the liner notes and the album covers and the lyrics sheets. I don’t actually own a stereo at the moment – I copy new albums on to my hard drive more or less as soon as I acquire them – but the idea of purchasing a download rather than the actual physical item? Not for me.

It’s just about twelve months now since I flew out to Australia. I looked forward to the flight as a time of reading, and packed accordingly. I should have known better. I need natural daylight or bright lamplight directly on to the page to read comfortably. Seated away from the window and with only the pallid, ambient light of the aeroplane cabin to see by, I was unable to read more than two or three pages for the whole twenty hours. (I had to content myself with Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire instead, just in case you’re wondering… ) As someone who finds it more or less impossible to sleep on planes, this was not a fun experience.

On arrival in Tasmania, the problems continued. Although perfect in every other way, the cabins and cottages we stayed in lacked any kind of adequate reading lamp, and I was instantly reminded of all the dozens of similar experiences I’d endured in hotels over the years, having to remove the lampshade from the pathetic bedside light in order to have even the faintest chance of reading before sleep. In Tasmania I was lucky. My mother, a convert to the ereader ever since her first trip to Australia some years before, generously lent me her Kindle, while she took over one of my physical books instead. What a revelation.

This was my first experience of using an ereader, believe it or not. I had no ideological objection to them – they just weren’t for me, or so I thought, which turned out to be pretty stupid, because the Kindle might have been designed especially for me.  Instead of struggling with closely packed .8 text on mottled, semi-translucent, poor quality paper, I had properly spaced .12 on a clear white background. Instead of having to sit right by a window or beneath an Anglepoise, I could read wherever I wanted to, up to and including an unlit room, because the Kindle would automatically adjust its light settings to my comfort level. It is difficult to express the delight this discovery brought me, and still brings.

Because of the steadily declining quality of most mass-market paperbacks, I’d already been purchasing second-hand hardbacks wherever I could, and failing that trade paperback editions, which are mostly better made and certainly better designed with the reader in mind. I’ve certainly no regrets about this – I’ve amassed some beautiful books this way, and given that the physical book is no less an object of veneration for me than it has always been, this is all to the good. But there were certain books I wanted very much to read, but put off reading because there was no decent hardback or trade paperback edition out there, and I knew the struggle with the blurry micro-text of the mass-market paperback would more than half-destroy any pleasure the book might otherwise have brought me. The most notable example here was Delany’s Dhalgren – the original mass-market paperback of this text is a tiny monstrosity, and even the new Gollancz Masterworks edition, with its closely packed, slightly blurry text, would have been a trial. Now, suddenly, Dhalgren and other books with similar print-quality issues were available for me to read in comfort. Far from losing concentration, my mind became liberated to contemplate the text. Suddenly I could read, rather than having to grind away at the difficulty of physically reading.

My reading speed went back up again, too. I’m not quite as fast as I was when I was in my twenties, but getting up there.

I still adore physical books – they’re piled all around me as I write. My experience of certain texts is still bound up in the memory of certain books, their physical presence, their weight, their smell, their specialness for other reasons. I am as emotional about books-as-things as I ever was. I think I may even subscribe to the belief that a book read electronically will never carry quite the same power and import, over time, as a book held in the hand, closed shut last thing at night. But I want to speak in passionate defence of the ereader also, for the freedom it has brought me, that it has no doubt brought to thousands of others, to enjoy books where physical limitations might have made them inaccessible.

And if I read something on my Kindle that turns out to be more than just a book I want to read – a book I want to keep, and hold, and flick back and forth in, run my fingers down its spine as I gloat over my amassed book-treasure – then I can look forward to the pleasure of buying it again in used-hardback format. A pleasure I’m looking forward to right at this moment with Hanya Yanagihara’s quite simply amazing The People in the Trees…

The Race on special offer!

February 20, 2015 /

To celebrate the novel’s recent award nominations and in the run-up to Eastercon, NewCon Press has made The Race (ebook) available for the special bargain price of just £1.99! This offer will not last forever, so grab your copy now.

Kindle format here

Other formats here

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I guess the word is… tentacular?

February 13, 2015 /

I’m very proud and somewhat bemused to report that my novel The Race has today been shortlisted for the BSFA Award and the Kitschies (Red Tentacle).

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This leaves me in an odd position. Regular readers of this blog will know that there are few things I enjoy more than a good discussion/argument over an awards shortlist, only that would be weird now, so that’s a pleasure I’ll be leaving to others this year, for these awards anyway. I would just mention that I’ve read the majority of titles on both shortlists, and could not hope to be in finer company.

I can’t slink back behind my desk without mentioning that I am also part of the roundtable of writers and critics shortlisted for the BSFA Award in the non-fiction category for the Strange Horizons Symposium on the State of British SF and Fantasy, published this summer in the run-up to LonCon. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of this project, which provides a lasting snapshot of our genre in 2015 as well as some fantastic essays by wonderful people. I’d urge anyone with even a passing interest in British science fiction to get stuck into this at once, if you haven’t already.

In the meantime, you can find the full shortlists for the Kitschies here, and for the BSFA Awards here.

Crime blog #6

February 7, 2015 /

Tony and Susan by Austin Wright tony&susan.cover

Susan Morrow, comfortable if not entirely content in her marriage to hospital consultant Arnold, is contacted out of the blue by her first husband Edward. Edward always wanted to be a writer – indeed, his decision to abandon his law studies in pursuit of what Susan privately considered to be a hopeless dream was at least part of what led to the breakdown of their marriage. Now it seems that dream wasn’t so hopeless after all – Edward’s letter accompanies the manuscript of his first novel, Nocturnal Animals, which he wants Susan to read. ‘You always were my best critic’, he reminds her. Will she take a look at what he has written, and let him know what she thinks of it?

Of course Susan can’t resist. Was she right to dismiss Edward’s ambitions all those years ago, or does her ex have a genuine talent? Besides, with Arnold away at a conference, possibly with an old flame, Susan needs something to divert her. She begins reading more or less straight away – and finds herself propelled back into the past with disconcerting speed.

I honestly don’t know what I think of this book. I loved the concept, the way the book alternates between Susan-reading and what Susan is reading, i.e the story of Tony Hastings in Edward’s novel, Nocturnal Animals. Susan’s sections are both a commentary on that novel, and a story in their own right – the story of her marriage to Edward and her current suspicions about her second husband, the arrogant, unimaginative and rather blokish doctor Arnold.  The first chapters of Nocturnal Animals, in which Tony Hastings has his life torn apart while en route with his wife and daughter to their summer place in Maine, are without a doubt the most compelling part of the whole. At this point I felt a genuine sympathy for Tony, as well as a driving compulsion to discover what happened next. I admired the style of the narrative, pared down and terse yet still fascinatingly introspective. Susan’s sections worked brilliantly with the Tony chapters, providing an effective contrast and an intriguing counterpoint with the shocking events as they unfolded in Nocturnal Animals.

So where did it all go wrong? For me, I think Tony and Susan began to come unstuck as Nocturnal Animals began to turn from tragedy to farce. Tony-the-victim is a pitiable figure. One feels for his initial predicament – indeed one suspects that one might not have behaved much better in similar circumstances – and the horror of the immediate aftermath of that predicament is brilliantly described. Yet Tony-the-avenging-angel is ridiculous, annoying and frustratingly gullible. His acquiescence in what happens next – a crime almost as repulsive and wrong-headed as the crime that led him there – proves the final nail in the coffin of credibility. I’d be fine with all this if I were convinced Austin Wright meant us to feel this way, if Nocturnal Animals were intended as some kind of Dostoevskian comment on the criminal-as-us, but I’m not convinced this is the case. The whole thing feels clumsily handled, as if Wright – and through him, Edward – wasn’t entirely sure what he meant us to think of Tony, and by extension the novel as a whole.

And in the end, Susan’s own story isn’t interesting enough to compete with Tony’s. I’d be the last reader to demand melodrama, but I was left wanting more here, and not in a good way.

I would definitely recommend Tony and Susan, because in spite of the novel’s flaws, there’s a lot to enjoy.  There’s the form, for a start, so full of the potential to fascinate, which for a lot of the time it absolutely does. And whatever you think of the ending, or the characters for that matter, I absolutely guarantee you won’t be bored. You’ll keep on reading, turning those pages just like Susan, both excited and afraid of what you might find.

The Race – real-time review

January 31, 2015 /

Some of you may well be familiar with Des Lewis’s real-time reviews, which, rather than following the orthodox star-rated or synopsis-plus approach to literary criticism, offer instead something rather different: a personal journey through the book at the time of reading. Well, Des has been at it again, I’m happy to say, and reading his reactions to The Race has been a pleasure indeed. You can find his thoughts, reflections, explorations and discoveries at his live-blog here.

James Herbert Award – the inaugural shortlist

January 29, 2015 /

Well, it seems we have a new SFFH fiction prize to add to the excitement of the annual awards season. The James Herbert Award for Horror Writing is a juried award, with a prize of £2,000, set up with the purpose of showcasing excellence and diversity within the horror genre. Administered by Pan Macmillan and chaired by Tom Hunter, the award is open to novels written in English and published within the UK and Ireland within the given year. The inaugural shortlist is as follows:

The Girl with all the Gifts by M. R. Carey (Orbit)

The Troop by Nick Cutter (Headline)

Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)

Bird Box by Josh Malerman (Harper/Voyager)

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (Tartarus)

An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman (Titan Books)

Initial thoughts? Unfortunately I haven’t read any of these, so I can’t comment on individual titles. (Indeed, this list brings home to me how much my reading has been dominated by science fiction recently – perhaps I need to do something about that and catch up on some horror?) But as someone who has a special fondness for Tartarus Press (my first professional sale was to Tartarus, my story ‘Terminus’) it’s lovely to see one of their titles on this list. And Frances Hardinge is an amazing writer – Cuckoo Song is already on my e-reader, ready and waiting.

For the most part, I’m one of those people who stand in favour of literary awards, mainly because I believe anything that gets people excited about books, and most importantly the discussion of books, cannot be a bad thing. So it’s nice to see a British award specifically for horror writing, something we’ve not had to date, and a prize that will, I hope, be a welcome alternative and complement both to the invariably and hugely US-dominated Bram Stoker Award.

Some questions occur, however. What’s this stipulation about works having to be ‘written in English’? Does this mean that translated works, appearing for the first time in English in the year in question, are to be actively barred, and if so, why? I would think the award would be the poorer for not admitting work by Johanna Sinisalo, say, or John Ajvide Lindqvist, or Otsuichi (one of the best horror writers working today, in my opinion), and that’s to name but three.

And then, all too quickly, we’re forced to confront yet again the accusation that horror as a field is narrow and blokish. I’m just going to come out and say that the Stoker preliminary ballot is horrifically male-dominated this year, and everyone knows that this has always been the rule rather than the exception. It’s sad to see, and YES, to anyone who still doubts it, this DOES matter.

Excluding translated works from the Herbert isn’t going to do much for its commitment to diversity, and neither is repeating the predictable and retrograde biases of the Stoker.

Of course, any new award is going to take a while to find its feet and discover its identity. I would wish the Herbert well, whilst hoping it actively seeks to develop the kind of imaginative insight and progressive approach that will enable it to properly live up to its stated ambitions.

That will be something to get people talking.

EDIT Feb 12: I’ve just heard from the James Herbert Award’s administrator, Tom Hunter, that there is no bar on translated horror fiction, and that any work appearing for the first time in English in the given year would be fully eligible for the award. Which is fantastic news. Here’s hoping we see some of the amazing European and World horror fiction that’s out there appearing on the Herbert shortlist in future years!

Nominating for the BSFA Awards – non-fiction focus

January 18, 2015 /

The non-fiction category of SF awards is often sorely neglected, not just in terms of the number and variety of nominations received, but in terms of overall discussion. We relegate this category at our peril, however, because an informed, rigorous and enthusiastic critical hinterland is what might be deemed a desirable necessity, crucial to the advancement and betterment of any field of interest, with science fiction being no exception.

As with short fiction, we are now in a position to access more information, speculation and argument about SF than ever before. Whilst some remain critical of the digital ‘democracy of opinion’, arguing that the sheer bulk of unedited, unsolicited and ill-informed commentary can have only a diluting and detrimental effect on the discourse, I am not one of them. I count universal access to critical platforms as unequivocally a good thing. The space available is infinite, ergo there is room for everyone and no ‘wasted space’. We should not forget that online magazines, forums, blogs and discussion boards have provided and continue to provide both platforms and entry points for those who might never have felt the confidence to submit articles to print magazines – magazines they might not have known about or could not have afforded to subscribe to in the first place. The diversification of commentary through digital media is one of the most welcome developments in our field in recent years. And if you happen to come across a piece of rhetoric that seems pointlessly aggressive, lacking in direction, badly written, offensive or just plain awful (as you surely will) it takes less than a second to exercise your discretion and close the window.

One criticism that I have some sympathy for is the claim that the current fashion for short, immediately assimilable ‘thinkpieces’ has led to a corresponding decline in sustained, quality criticism in online venues. Certainly, the perceived need for speed of response – to have one’s say on a current topic immediately and ahead of the rest – has tended to mitigate against essays that take longer than an hour to write or ten minutes to read. But surely this matter is in our own hands? Whilst it can be frustrating to see any number of half-arsed blog posts rattled off at the speed of light and before the author has given themselves time to form a properly constructed argument, there is no law that states that we ‘have’ to react, react, react, immediately and with venom. There is plenty of quality work out there, and we owe it to ourselves as readers, writers and critics to discover it, promote it, argue over it and contribute to it. One of the salient advantages of online criticism is the writer’s ability to link to other relevant works, thus bringing divergent voices and points of view simultaneously to the same arena. This is a whole new way of constructing criticism, and should not be downplayed.

Deciding what to nominate in the non-fiction category can be especially difficult because of the variety of what’s on offer and the differing modes in which it’s presented. How can we possibly decide between a full-length monograph, and a 1,000-word essay, for example? I’m not even going to try and answer that question at this point – that’s an argument for another day (or perhaps for two separate and distinct award categories..?) Rather I’d like to draw your attention to a number of non-fiction items, in various formats, that happened to catch my attention in 2014. In no particular order, then:

 

Call and Response by Paul Kincaid (Beccon Publications) This collection of essays on everyone from H. G. Wells to China Mieville showcases Paul Kincaid’s ongoing commitment to and engagement with science fiction literature to marvellous effect. The table of contents brings together essays culled from publications as various as Foundation, The TLS, Strange Horizons, the LARB and Vector, and includes all-new section introductions and a generous handful of previously unpublished pieces. Essential on every level.

Greg Egan by Karen Burnham (Modern Masters of Science Fiction, University of Illinois Press) I snapped this up when it was cheap on Kindle, because I enjoy Karen Burnham’s criticism and because I think Greg Egan is a writer I need to get to grips with, at entry level at the very least. I think this is a wonderful monograph. Burnham clearly knows Egan back to front at both a literary and a scientific level. She’s in sympathy with his ideals as a writer, but never lets her appreciation of what he’s up to blind her to the criticisms levelled against him. Her enthusiasm and knowledge bounce off the page, and if I wanted a travelling companion on the road to understanding a writer so unabashedly scientific in his approach to science fiction, I could not have asked for a better one. This book is entertaining, informative, and endlessly thought-provoking.  It has also left me with the resolution to read at least one Greg Egan novel this year.

Stay by John Clute (Beccon Publications) In common with the Paul Kincaid book, John Clute’s 2014 collection of essays boasts a new introduction, several previously unpublished pieces (including a never-before-seen short story) as well as updates and revisions to all previously published essays. John Clute is one of our greatest commentators bar none. His essays form some of the most astute and articulate literary criticism around; they are also works of art, and I live in a simmering state of outrage that he remains more or less unknown outside the genre. Included in Stay is ‘The Darkening Garden’, a ‘short lexicon of horror’ and one of the most persuasive and ingenious analyses of horror fiction I have ever read (even if you don’t agree with it, it’s still brilliant, and would be worth the cover price all by itself). Nor should we forget Clute’s irregular column for Strange Horizons, Scores. Particular highlights for me in 2014 would include his thoughts on Lucius Shepard’s Beautiful Blood and Jo Walton’s My Real Children and his side-by-side analysis of Howard Jacobson’s J and Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest.

Deep Forests and Manicured Gardens: a look at two new short fiction magazines – Jonathan McCalmont (Ruthless Culture) I truly don’t have enough good words to say about this piece. It’s a multi-part essay in which the two internally-linked sub-sections on the magazines in question (Terraform and Uncanny) form essential components. I don’t always agree with Jonathan on a point-by-point basis, but I admire his criticism enormously, and believe that if we had more commentators like him – rigorous, knowledgeable, engaged, and most importantly uncompromised by genre factionalism or the concerns thereof – the critical hinterland of science fiction would be in a much ruder state of health. In Deep Forests and Manicured Gardens, Jonathan discusses two seemingly opposed tendencies within genre short fiction (and one might argue within genre fiction as a whole), the reflection of said tendencies within the magazine culture and the implications for the vitality of new short fiction and emerging writers. Much of his concern is tied up in what he sees as the shifting of the centre ground of SF from a primarily ideas-based ‘branch of non-fiction’ towards a mulch of ‘over-written sentence fragments about magical people experiencing emotions’. He is just as keen to interrogate a literary landscape in which new science fiction stories are not so much a medium of communication with an audience as the currency of social advancement within the genre.

I remain undecided as to how much of Jonathan’s argument I agree with – all mulchy middle ground, me – but I find much that interests me in his viewpoint, and the gutsiness of his writing always leaves me feeling liberated and inspired generally. I feel wholeheartedly grateful that he has written this essay, as well as what might be deemed its companion pieces, Short Fiction and the Feels, and A Perspective on Perspectives. I am always genuinely shocked when I notice people feeling threatened by essays like these. If we are to evolve and compete as a branch of literature, objective, up-front criticism of this kind is what we need, and a lot more of it.

Transgressing Genre Boundaries and All That by Ethan Robinson (Marooned Off Vesta) Science fiction is a unique literature and a radical literature. Shouldn’t we be fighting to keep it that way? Like Jonathan McCalmont’s essay above, Ethan Robinson’s piece is an articulate and robust interrogation of the state of science fiction literature today, the direction it appears to be taking and whether the push towards the convergence of the science fictional and the mainstream is in any sense desirable. It’s a wonderful piece of polemic, one I’ve commented about before and recommend unreservedly. Whether you agree with it or not, Ethan’s argument is valuable, timely and absolutely necessary. More like this, please! (And if there’s any way we can group his ‘Sturgeonblogging’ series of essays under a single project heading, nominate that, too!)

Review: Interstellar by Abigail Nussbaum (Asking the Wrong Questions). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Abigail Nussbaum is shaping up to be one of our most knowledgeable and articulate critics. This essay on Nolan’s film is a fine example of what she does so brilliantly, commenting on the larger movements within science fiction by means of close focus on a single work or group of works. She’s such a good writer. Her piece Mad as Hell, Thoughts on Aaron Sorkin is also pretty much essential reading.

Random Snapshots of Book Hunting in Downtown Nairobi by Mehul Gohil. Exactly what it says on the tin. This is a wonderful piece, packed with insights, compelling writing and the love of science fiction. This was billed as Part 1, and though the essay is complete in itself I am still hoping Part 2 will appear at some point in the future.

The Unbearable Solitude of being an African Fangirl by Chinelo Onwualu (Omenana) A short piece, but an essential read.

Black Nerds , Black Cool, and Afrofuturism by Troy L. Wiggins is exactly the kind of longer, in-depth essay that is vital to the genre, to promoting diversity, understanding and exploration within the genre, and that I for one would love to see more of. Please read this.

China Dreams: contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld) Ken Liu is tireless in his promotion of Chinese science fiction, and it’s wonderful to see Clarkesworld taking the initiative here not just in bringing us more stories, but more information about them, too. This essay is a medium-length overview of the field as it currently stands. As Liu himself says upfront, giving anything like a comprehensive assessment of a literature so intrinsically diverse and multitudinous is pretty much impossible, but here at least is a place to start. A must-read.

I Love Writing Books – so I Need to Get Better at Writing Them by Kameron Hurley. I admire Kameron Hurley as a writer. I also like Kameron Hurley’s blog, and feel a generous measure of identification with the stuff she has to say about the writing process, emphasising the absolute necessity of consistent hard work and perseverance. She’s always worth reading, on any subject, and I admire her honestly. Her piece Some (Honest) Publishing Numbers, and (Almost) Throwing in the Towel is refreshingly candid about the whole getting-published-and-staying-published circus.

Me and Science Fiction: SF and Politics by Eleanor Arnason (Strange Horizons) “What I like about SF as a traditional category is that it has room for both slipstream and pop culture. It does not merely use pop culture, as a fine art writer might do, it includes it. The gamers and cosplayers and comic fans are not the subjects of our art. They are us.” Eleanor Arnason’s series of columns for Strange Horizons have been excellent and I hope there’ll be more of them. She has a way of inviting people into her writing, facing down challenging subjects in a dynamic and inclusive manner. Do also take a look at Me and Science Fiction: Books and the Death of the Middle Class, also in Strange Horizons.

Strange Horizons Bookclub: Tigerman by Niall Harrison, Aishwarya Subramanian and Maureen Kincaid Speller (Strange Horizons) A fascinating discussion of a book I thought I wasn’t going to get on with (because superheroes) but then did. (It’s stayed with me actually, far more than I thought it would.) The participants in this roundtable found plenty to talk about, and this article provides the perfect starting point for anyone wanting to get deeper into Tigerman, or simply to eavesdrop on an informed and entertaining analysis of some aspects of contemporary science fiction, beginning with the question of whether Tigerman can be considered properly science fictional in the first place.  These book clubs are a wonderful innovation at SH – I’m already looking forward to the next one.

Reviewing the Other: Like Dancing about Architecture by Nisi Shawl (Strange Horizons) This truly is an essential read for any reviewer, to be bookmarked and passed on at every opportunity.

Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn by Maureen Kincaid Speller (Paper Knife) The only thing wrong with MKS’s reviews is that we don’t see more of them! See also her review of Sarah Tolmie’s The Stone Boatmen at Strange Horizons, and let’s hope Maureen decides she’s up for blogging the Clarke again this year, because her 2013 posts were a highlight of the awards season.

Feminist World Building: Toward Future Memory by L. Timmel Duchamp (The Cascadia Subduction Zone) CZS is a fascinating periodical that really should be better known than it is. This essay blends the personal with the historical in an intricate and involving way and is exactly the kind of considered, informed non-fiction writing the genre needs more of. It’s powerfully argued and beautifully constructed. A keeper.

Biting Style: The Bone Clocks and Anti-Fantasy by Max Gladstone. This is a thoughtful and perceptive essay, arguing that Mitchell’s ham-fisted use of fantasy in The Bone Clocks was kind of intentional.  I was personally very disappointed by the novel, and (though I hate to admit it, even now) ended up coming down more on the side of James Wood’s less than generous analysis in the New Yorker. But I found Gladstone’s piece so fascinating and well argued that it almost – almost – persuaded me to reconsider. For an impassioned Joycean ‘yes!’ to The Bone Clocks (and an antidote to the Wood piece), see James Smythe’s affirmatory review at Strange Horizons.

The Expanding Borders of Area X: Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach in the Context of a Weird Renaissance by Scott Nicolay (Weird Fiction Review). A great little essay on the history of weird fiction, the reasons for its current flowering, and how Jeff VanderMeer’s seminal trilogy fits into that. It’s also worth noting that Nicolay’s own debut collection Ana Kai Tangata has received some great press and is a likely candidate for some awards of its own this year. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Writing is a Lonely Business: James McKimmey, Philip K. Dick and the Lost Art of Author Correspondence by Jason Starr (Los Angeles Review of Books) A lovely piece that takes an in-depth look at a set of letters written by Dick and McKimmey ‘when they were both young, emerging genre writers’. Starr’s essay also makes some more general observations about the value of correspondence as an insight into a writer’s life and work. As someone who has derived significant pleasure from reading published volumes of writers’ letters over the years, this subject interests me a great deal. Only time will tell if the form will survive the internet (I think it will – writers love writing to each other, and we’re going to carry on doing it; whether that’s physically or electronically is of lesser importance) but this sensitive and personal reminiscence does a good job of reminding us of why such letters are to be treasured.

Rambling, Offensive and Unbeatable: Beam Me Up, Old School Sci-Fi by Sandra Newman (The Guardian) “The average reader is no longer a mind-blown teen who will accept any unpleasantness in exchange for cool ideas. The average reader is the average reader. So editors are acquiring books according to criteria that were formerly incidental to the genre – quality, readability, plots that make sense. The twisted misogyny is gone, and with it the bracing misanthropy. The cool ideas are still there, but a certain anarchic power has been lost.” There was a dismaying and predictably knee-jerk reaction to Newman’s piece in some quarters, with people choosing to interpret it as a call either to excuse or, even more bizarrely, put back the racism and misogyny that dogs many of the science fiction texts that are considered by the orthodoxy as classic. This is so obviously not what Sandra Newman was saying. Like Jonathan McCalmont and Ethan Robinson above, what she’s talking about is the slide towards a new orthodoxy in SF, a bland kind of crossover that doesn’t really say much of anything, much less voice opinions that might be considered provocative. The piece may be roughly worded in places, but what it has to say about the maverick tradition in science fiction is well worth reading and considering.

 

Don’t forget that nominations for the BSFA Awards close on January 31st. Get yours in now!

Nominating for the BSFA Awards – short fiction focus

January 12, 2015 /

Nominations for this year’s BSFA Awards close on January 31st. In order for the awards to be truly representative of what’s going on in science fiction right now, we need as many people who are eligible to nominate, to nominate. Even if there’s just one SF novel you read last year that you feel passionate about, nominate that. If you’re a member of the BSFA, or a member of this year’s Eastercon, get your nominations in before the deadline here!

I haven’t decided on my final BSFA ballot quite yet. There are a couple more books I’m hoping to get read before the deadline (including this one – guess who purloined my copy!) I am still reading 2014 short fiction. too, and it’s short fiction I want to concentrate on in this post. I’ve felt quite depressed in recent years, looking at short fiction awards shortlists which have tended to privilege, again and again, a same few overhyped stories (some of them excellent, but that’s not the point) at the expense of – well, variety, urgency, originality, bizarreness. I can also point to myself as part of the problem – I haven’t been reading anywhere near enough short fiction, which means firstly that I’ve been missing out and secondly that I’ve been over-reliant on the recommendations of other, more valiant souls who I’ve been depending on to do the spadework for me.

The constant refrain at the moment is that there is now so much short fiction published each year that no one has a hope of keeping up with it all.  While it is undoubtedly true that the annual volume of short fiction now makes a comprehensive overview an ideal rather than an obtainable reality, I’ve noticed a dismaying trend recently to meet the impossibility of forming an objective judgement with a round dismissal of everything that’s out there.

I understand this reflex, believe me. What often makes me uneasy about the state of SFF short fiction is not so much the content but the context. I find magazines and anthologies difficult – all too often there’s that rag-bag effect that runs the danger of levelling everything down to a kind of flavourless mush – and I actually prefer reading short fiction within the context of a single-author collection, where you can gain a better sense of the writer’s overall purpose and character. On the other hand,  SFF is unique in offering a level literary playing field within the short fiction market and whatever the inherent problems, our magazine heritage, wherein new writers can and do regularly share ToC space with masters of the field, should not be discarded or denigrated lightly. Rather, this evolving democracy is something we should be proud of, and celebrate.

Just before Christmas I had an epiphany: what if every BSFA Awards voter (and Hugo voter) were to read just twenty pieces of new short fiction every year? Surely this would have at least some impact, not just upon individuals’ knowledge of the field but on their sense of investment in the awards process. Whether through random online reading (one of the most radical advancements in the field in recent years has been the increasing quality and availability of free short fiction online) or through the purchase of magazine subscriptions would be down to individual inclination and cash available, but I honestly do think the twenty-shorts-per-year formula would have a considerable effect on the discourse around short fiction.

Why not try it and see? It’s certainly what I’m going to be doing from now on. I would hope to read a whole lot more than twenty new stories, but I’m setting that as a lower boundary and intend to stick to it, both in the current year and beyond.

For now, I would like to share my thoughts on some of the 2014 short fiction that has caught my attention. One thing that is certain: the field is very far from dead, and with a more informed and passionate discussion we can all help to make it even more exciting. Here goes then with my recommendations to date and in no particular order:

 

SHORT STORIES

‘The Innocence of a Place’ by Margaret Ronald (Strange Horizons). One of my year’s favourites, this story about an investigation into the disappearance of a group of young women kept reminding me of one of my favourite films, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. I loved the ‘true crime’ style, something  I’m really into at the moment, combined with the personal insights of the narrator. Very much recommended.

‘Never the Same’ by Polenth Blake (Strange Horizons). A woman outcast from her community looks for ways to save it. I liked the narrative voice of this story so much I immediately looked for more fiction by the same author. I found ‘On Shine Wings’ at the Journal of Unlikely Entomology and was not disappointed. This story also features a beautiful illustration by the author, and be sure to check out the interview with Polenth Blake here.

‘Autodidact‘ by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Clarkesworld).  Another favourite. ‘On Srisunthorn Station, the corpses of conquered stars are nurtured into ships.’ A survivor of genocide learns to bond with one of these world-ships – but where does her unusual talent really stem from? What I admire most about Sriduangkaew’s work is her own unusual talent for bonding quite spectacular feats of linguistic invention with hi-tech science fictional concepts. Her approach to space opera and urban fantasy is so refreshingly word-based, so tactile. The worlds she creates are harsh – what tenderness there is, is ultimately to be found in the language. You might also like ‘When We Harvested the Nacre-Rice‘ (Solaris Rising 3)

‘Ogres of East Africa’ by Sofia Samatar (Long Hidden).  Another brilliant story from Sofia Samatar. ‘Ogres’ is presented in the form of a series of catalogue entries on the ogres of East Africa, with another story entirely unfolding in the notes scribbled in the margins by the catalogue’s complier. Equally powerful is Samatar’s future dystopia ‘How to Get Back to the Forest’ (Lightspeed) which revisits some of the concerns voiced in ‘Selkie Stories are for Losers’, although this is a very different story.

”Help Me Follow my Sister into the Land of the Dead’ by Carmen Maria Machado (Help Fund My Robot Army). I enjoyed this story so much.  It’s presented in the form of a Kickstarter campaign, with accompanying user comments and FAQs. Humour, horror and great sadness, inventively portrayed. I love stories that do things with form and I love Machado’s writing.

‘The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul’ by Maria Theodoridou (Clarkesworld). I encountered this story while blogging the Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and was struck by its technical accomplishment and use of actual science. I have to commend the author’s courage in bringing us a story that is almost one-hundred percent pure bleakness.  This is a story that’s stayed with me. Genuinely original and throught-provoking.

‘The Hymn of Ordeal, No 23’ by Rhiannon Rasmussen (Lightspeed). One of those occasions where you fall completely in love with a story for its imagery and language. A war involving millions condensed into a prose-poem about a brother and sister. There’s stuff here that reminds me of the worlds conjured in Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s stories. You can read this in fewer than ten minutes, but this story’s power will remain with you far longer.

‘A Dweller in Amenty’ by Genevieve Valentine (Nightmare Magazine).

‘You’d think some sins would taste heady, forbidden. Worth it. An affair would be sharply sweet, a murder would taste of panic and lurching triumph, a lie would taste like escape, or spring.

If it did, there would be more of us.

A love affair is stale breath. A murder is sweat. A lie is a fingernail of dirt.’

I’ve been a fan of Genevieve Valentine ever since reading her debut novel, the marvellous Mechanique, and ‘A Dweller in Amenty’ is a powerful little horror story indeed. Based around the legend of the Sin Eater, the dubiously ‘gifted’ individual tasked with taking upon themselves the sins of the deceased in order that their cleansed souls can progress to the afterworld, this is what character-driven horror is all about. The narrator of this story could sustain a whole novel, easily.

‘The Mao Ghost’ by Chen Qiufan (Lightspeed). Ken Liu has done powerful things with the translation here, subtly conveying to non-Chinese speakers such as myself how a single word might carry several meanings, depending on intonation and context. This is a powerful story about a young girl coming to terms with the fact that her father is dying, and learning about what her parents’ generation went through during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Also cats.  This left me eager to read Chen Qiufan’s first novel in English translation, The Waste Tide. Ken Liu describes this as ‘a cyberpunk thriller set in China’s e-waste processing hub’. (Slated for release this year, apparently – I can’t wait.) Check out the author spotlight with Chen Qiufan here, and while you’re at it, do please read Ken Liu’s essay on Chinese SF, ‘China Dreams’, here.

‘One Day I Will Die on Mars’ by Paul Ford (Terraform). An ultra-short snapshot of a future where one particularly rapacious company controls all business – and through that, personal – life in New York and by implication the world. It’s horrific, humorous and prescient all at the same time. Packs a lot into a small space and well worth a read.

‘Targeted Strike 2: Judgement Database’ by Adam Rothstein (Terraform). Another ultra-short, smart piece, this time about censorship, violence and the exercise of power. I particularly liked the cut-up narrative style of this one, and again, there’s a savage amount of content conveyed in a relatively few words. Doesn’t seem right to call this enjoyable but it is.

‘The Damaged’ by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Interzone). An original and beautifully written take on the Frankenstein archetype, ‘The Damaged’ tells the story of Robin Kirkland, a bio-technician who works for a corporation that specializes in the production of AIs known as Playmatez. A playmate is designed to fulfil its owner’s wishes in every conceivable way. Only some of them come out damaged. Robin, damaged in her own way from the fallout of a failed relationship, becomes obsessed with finding out why. There’s a Bladerunner vibe to this story, which contains enough interesting material to fill a novel.

‘Black Paintings’ by James Smythe (Jurassic). This story, inspired by the titular Black Paintings by Goya, utilizes only the barest traces of the speculative, and tends more towards horror than SF, but I found it so good I had to include it. Its amoral businessman protagonist reminded me uncannily of John Law, the antihero of Tobias Hill’s 2004 near-future quasi-thriller The Cryptographer.

‘Popular Images from the First Manned Mission to Enceladus’ by Alex Dally MacFarlane (Solaris Rising 3). What you’d call a ‘list story’ creating its narrative through a number of individually detailed snapshots of a future journey into space. MacFarlane is shaping up to be a very fine writer, boldly inventive in her use of both language and form. You may also enjoy her lushly evocative ‘Because I Prayed this Word’ (Strange Horizons) and another of her distinctive list stories, ‘Pocket Atlas of Planets’  at Interfictions Online.

‘Storytelling for the Night Clerk’ by JY Yang (Strange Horizons). A short and beautifully evocative piece, set in the future. Memories are a precious commodity, but who gets to choose whose memories are preserved for the rest of us? I especially loved the way this story shifted focus at the end.

‘The Final Girl’ by Shira Lipkin (Strange Horizons). A short piece that explores similar territory to Daryl Gregory’s short novel We Are All Completely Fine, also out this year. I admired Shira Lipkin’s sideways approach to a story in her contribution to The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and I admire it again here.  A nice piece of work.

‘The Fisher Queen‘ by Alyssa Wong (F&SF). A story of mermaids, and family history, and the Mekong river. It bites. I loved this from the first sentence. Superb.

 

NOVELETTES

‘The Devil in America’ by Kai Ashante Wilson (tor.com). If you only have time for one piece of new short fiction this month, please make it this one. A stunning piece of writing, ‘The Devil in America’ explores issues of racism, community, belief and spiritual heritage in post-Civil War America. It’s a riveting read. I hesitate to use the word ‘magical’ to describe a work that had me in tears at the brutality of the events portrayed, but that’s what it is. It’s not just about the past, either, as some recent events in America have shown. For me personally, the little touches of meta-fiction in the form of ‘tutor’s notes’ lifted this story even higher. For clearer insights and more information about this story, do read this interview with Kai Ashante Wilson at Rochita Loenen Ruiz’s books blog. (And Mr Wilson, please write us some more stories. Write a novel.)

‘A Litany of Earth‘ by Ruthanna Emrys (tor.com). How lovely to see the Cthulhu mythos turned on its head! Aphra Marsh is one of the few who survived the state action to purge the town of Innsmouth of its Elder families… Now, living what passes for a normal life in 1950s America, she is doing her best to remain unobtrusive and to put the worst of her memories behind her. But FBI agent Ron Spector has other ideas… This is a beautifully written piece of alt-mythos that is solidly entertaining as story and a deft piece of social (and literary) comment to boot. I enjoyed it a lot.

‘The 4th Domain’ by M. John Harrison (Kindle Single). Vintage MJH, simply stunning. If you liked The Course of the Heart you’ll love this.  End-times London, end-times narrator, seriously disturbed people. Rotting canal barges. Oh, and there’s some mythos-y-type stuff here, too, if you want to read it that way. Whichever way you read it, it’s a gem.

‘Reborn’ by Ken Liu (tor.com). This story is more ‘out there’ science fictionally than others I’ve read by Liu, and I liked it a lot. Liu’s style relies quite heavily on exposition, but there’s no harm in that when his stories are as compulsively readable as they are. ‘Reborn’ is a very deft story about colonization, and the ownership of one’s own memories and actions, be they good or bad. There are plenty of ideas in here, but the story also feels exciting to read, in a classic SF-thriller kind of way. Makes me eager to read Liu’s debut novel The Grace of Kings, which is due for release in April. You may very well also enjoy Liu’s alt-history short story  ‘The Long Haul’, which explores some related themes in a different way.

 

NOVELLAS

The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories). This is what I mean about works that get overlooked. Many more people should be talking about this novella. One of the most original and downright weird pieces of fiction I’ve read in ages, The Beauty is the story of what happens to men when women disappear from the world, victims of a mysterious fungal infection that leaves the surviving males aware that they will be the last of their kind. The novella focuses upon a small group, living as an alternative community in the Valley of the Rocks in North Devon. Our narrator, Nathan, is the community’s bard. He tells them stories about themselves, about the women they’ve lost, about the world as it was and will be. When that world begins to change in a manner not one of them could have imagined, he must chronicle that, too. Whiteley’s considerable skill as a writer is fully on display here – her language is simple but perfectly poised, there’s a kind of mythic reach, an oral history feel to it that brings it close to song. The story itself is simple too – and yet so complex, so layered and so ambiguous that it would take many pages to unpack it adequately. This novella should win stuff. Seriously, just read it.  Original work is being done. Here’s proof.

Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine (Wyrm). It seems I have a thing for doomed spaceship stories at the moment because I thought this was wonderful. Reminded me a lot of Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Dry Salvages, which I read and loved in the autumn. Also Alien, although in this case the threat is more cousin-to-HAL than xenomorph. Amadis Reyes wakes from deep sleep aboard the Menkalinan. The rest of the crew are dead, she’s a full five years away from the ship’s pre-programmed destination, with insufficient supplies. Something is very wrong. This is a tense, compelling read, gorgeously written.

Scale-Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Immersion). If anything, Sriduangkaew’s use of language here is even more luxuriously dense and textured than in the two short stories I mentioned above. An urban fantasy different from any you’ll read this year, Scale-Bright is set in a Hong Kong where reality may reinvent itself in a second, and where ancient enmities between mythical beings are being fought out under the noses of the mortals who go unknowing about their daily business. Julienne is caught between those worlds – as well she might be, when her aunts are goddesses. The colours flare off the page. Like poetry, the text is intuited first through the senses, and only then understood through the lens of reason. Just superb writing.

The Last Log of the Lacrimosa by Alastair Reynolds (Subterranean). This novella is actually a fascinating counterpart to Dream Houses. With its classic SF vibe, it’s highly entertaining and the kind of story that reminds me of why I started reading science fiction in the first place. A shuttle has crash-landed on a more or less deserted ice-planet. Three adventurers (and a monkey – don’t forget the monkey because it’s important) answer a distress signal… Sounding familiar yet? Reminded me in every good way of Reynolds’s earlier novella Diamond Dogs, which was the first piece I read by him. Just the thing for a winter evening. (I was convinced they’d feed the captain to the Borg-monster at the end, though. Seriously.)

I’ve very much enjoyed immersing myself in short fiction these past couple of weeks, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing other people’s recommendations and ballots as Hugo season approaches.

In the meantime, don’t forget to nominate for the BSFA!

Into 2015

January 5, 2015 /

lagoon.nnediI’ve just finished reading Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon, and what a surprising, inventive and above all enriching text it is. It took me a while to get into this novel, but suddenly it all started coming together for me and by the end I felt literally breathless with excitement at what I’d read. This is a story – with its jump cuts, tessellations and chaotic crowd scenes, Okorafor encourages us to view it as a film – about aliens invading the city of Lagos, but such a bald summary seems too straightforward for a book that will feel unlike any other alien invasion story you’ve ever read. Science fiction cohabits with fantasy in the most relaxed, devil-take-it manner, producing a vigorous, gorgeous mutation, a runaway train of speculation that is, well, exactly what the book-doctor ordered. It’s fearless.

Predictably, it was the deft post-modernist touches that, for me, lifted the novel beyond the good and towards outstanding. I loved the ‘I was there’ chapters – non-linear snapshots of narrative from random people caught up by events – and those ‘wink’ moments when Okorafor steps out of the text to ask her readers: ‘How would you have felt?’ Of course I’m going to love the Spider the Artist sections, and indeed all the chapters narrated by non-human characters (a swordfish, a bat, a tarantula, a man-eating road) were pure narrative joy. I loved the ‘deleted’ chapter set in Chicago, too – there are so many memorable moments and ideas. Oh, and did I mention the richness of the language, the textures of languages, plural, that permeate this book? I could go on and on.

I am lost in admiration of Okorafor’s creativity, the way she seizes her themes, weaving humour and beauty and stark political commentary seamlessly together. I especially appreciate what Lagoon has to say about instinct and logic, how both are important and indeed essential – to art, to science, to a balanced view of the world, to life.

SFF like this – SFF that obeys no pre-set archetypes and invents its own rules – is such a breath of fresh air. It reminds us of the limitless possibilities of the genre, encourages us to try writing (or indeed reading) something new and inimitably personal to us.

What a wonderful book, and what a perfect start to my reading in 2015. How it surprised me. I love it when this happens.

For the year ahead, there are still some 2014 titles I want to read before I start turning my attention to what’s coming out this year – 2014 seems to have been an exceptional year for SFF novels, I think, which should hopefully make things interesting as awards season rolls around. I’m also intending to shore up some of the gaps in my SFF knowledge in 2015 by making a conscious effort to read more back catalogue SF – I’ve not read A Canticle for Leibowitz, for instance, or Dhalgren, The Female Man, Kindred and that’s just for starters.

And what about 2015 titles I am looking forward to? I’m sure there are loads I don’t know about yet, hopefully with many exciting discoveries among them. But of those I do know about, books I’m especially looking forward to include Kelly Link’s new collection Get in Trouble, China Mieville’s new collection Three Moments of an Explosion, Catherynne Valente’s Art Deco Hollywood-in-space novel Radiance (if it’s anything like as wonderful as ‘The Radiant Car thy Sparrows Drew’ it’s going to be fantastic), Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border, Anna Small’s The Chimes and Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (both these last sound really intriguing). Looks like a good year to me!

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