forestofglory | Entries tagged with sf

I am once again contributing to cozy SFF discourse: Domestic Labor and Community Building Rec List

This list is for all of you who said "I'd like cozy SFF, if it was the thing you talked about"

Check out my latest post on Lady Business:On Cozy Short SFF

I started writing this nearly a year ago, then put it aside for a while. A couple of months ago I looked at it again and did some revisions, and got some feedback from a friend, then I sat on it some more, trying to decide if I wanted to make even more edits. Today I decided that the prefect is the enemy of done and just went ahead and finally posted it!

Recently on twitter Alexandra Rowland wrote a thread about recing someone there first fantasy novel. The thread had a lot good advice but what caught my eye was Rowland’s description of fantasy as a language. That reminded me of Jo Walton’s piece about SF reading protocols. I think it's super valuable to remember that you have to learn how to read SFF, but also that SFF takes on non-SFF works can get you to some strange places.

Here's some thoughts on some of the media I've consumed recently:

*I saw a play! It was Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman and the Berkeley Rep! Its a play based on Ovid's Metamorphoses, so Roman myth, preformed with a pool. I'd seen this once before about 20 years ago but forgotten a lot. Anyways it was really good, I loved how the stories flowed together and how they used the water, but rather darker than I remembered.

*I'm still reading and enjoying Fruits Basket. I think I'm about at the point where I stopped reading years ago.

*R and I have been watching a little bit of Stargate (SG1). The pilot was not great, but he's been he's picked a few good episodes form the 1st season that I've enjoyed so far. I last one featured a kickass older woman scientist which was nice. Which also watched the 1st few episodes of netflix's Carmen San Diego, which was very pretty. But it didn't really grab either of us.

*I have ton of things out from the library just now. A lot of it is Fruits Basket, but there's also some other Manga, a few graphic novels, the most recent trade of Squirrel Girl, and couple of YA books I want to try to read before nominations close for the Lodestar.

*I've only got three stories left on in my 2018 short fiction TBR.

What are you reading and watching? Seen any live performances lately

I'm experimenting with shorter but hopefully more frequent rec posts instead of the monthly round ups. We'll see how it goes.

Anyways I got a copy of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe out for the library and thought I should mention it here. Now I have been picking a choosing what to read in this, but everything has been really good. I especially liked "seasons of glass and Iron" by Amal El-Mohtar in which princess form two fairy tales rescue each other. But I also like the mix of things familiar fairy tales and unfamiliar, western and non-western, all kind of settings. Plus the stories have pretty capital letters and interesting author notes. Definitely check it out if you like fairy tales at all.

Crossposts: http://forestofglory.livejournal.com/649971.html

So Hugo nomination season is open. I've been ordering holds from the library and even bought a couple of books so I can read lots of 2016 work before nominations close in March. Anyways during this process I've also decided to not read a couple of things that are probably really good and well done, but aren't what I want to be reading.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Novella) This a retelling of a Lovecraft story that a bunch of my friends loved. I'm not reading it because I don't like Lovecraft, and I find retelling generally lose a lot if you are not familiar with the original.

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw (Novella) I've really enjoyed a bunch of Khaw's short fiction, but this one is described as dark, lovecraftan and noir and none of those things are for me.

The Obelisk Gate by by N.K. Jemisin (Novel) This the second book in Jemisin's new trilogy, and I've had a copy of the 1st book since it came out. However I've been told that there is some really awful child injury in that book, and I can't bring myself to read it, so I won't be reading the second either.

Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction by André M. Carrington (best related work) This sounds awesome! It's academic history/criticism about race and science fiction. But I want to finish watching DS9 before I read this and I've been watching it pretty slowly and doubt I will finish before March.

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley (best related work)I really admire Kameron Hurley, but every time I read one of her pep talks I feel bad about myself for not working hard enough. I'm really good at beating myself up without any extra help so I'm going to skip this book, and try to work on self compassion instead.

Anyways if you are not me these might be great books that you will love. Consider checking them out.

Crossposts: http://forestofglory.livejournal.com/649332.html

I'm interviewed in the most recent episode of Cabbages and Kings. We talked about immersion and worldbuilding, and I got to geek out a bit about ecology. The episode is 30 minutes long. Go have a listen if you'd like.

Cabbages and Kings is a fairly new podcast that I've been enjoying. (I've also been chatting with the host, Jonah Sutton-Morse on twitter.) All the episodes are 30 min or less which nice change from most SFF podcasts which are long and rambling. Currently there are lots interviews which feature people talking about their history with SFF and aspects of the genre they are passionate about. There are also some episodes that are in depth looks at books, I'm quite found to the two part episode on Ancillary Justice which talks a lot about theory of mind.

Crossposts: http://forestofglory.livejournal.com/634419.html

So I've been writing fairly detailed reports of my non-fiction reading, but not much on my fiction reading. .

Recently I've been reading a lot of books recommended by Jo Walton's (aka

papersky) posts on tor.com Most of what I'm going to talk about in this post I read at least in part because of her recommendation. I don't want to read everything she writes about just most of it.

So on to new books.

Kage Baker's company novel's: I just stayed up all night reading the 2nd one of these, and now I want to read the next one. However so far each one is a complete story arc, which I think is a good thing. Still I very much want to know more.

C.J. Cherryh Alliance/Union books. I'd read Downbelow Station but didn't really get into in -- but I decided to give the series another go. It seems that most of it is out of print, but I picked up an omnibus call Alliance Space which contains Merchanter's Luck and Forty Thousand in Gehenna both of which I enjoyed. So I think I'll read another one -- though I'm not sure which. Mostly likely Cyteen because it is in print.

Lisa Goldstein -- I read The Red Magician (because of and internet discustion about Jewish fantasy books) and Tourists (another Jo Walton rec) both of which are really really good but quite different from each other. I'm planning on reading more by her.

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. This has been on my to read list for a long time, but I didn't really want to by a trade paperback. However I finally noticed that YA trade paperbacks aren't much more then the normal sized one. Definitely good, but not what I expected. I expected more magic and less normal life, however I like normal life so that is all to the good.

Fugitive pieces by Anne Micheals -- I read this because

liv thought I might like it. I'm not sure whether I did or not. I tend not to like books with a much focus on the prose as this one had. The prose is very complex, to the point that I'm not always sure what is going on. Which may be the point. It is also a very sad book. So I'm going to go with this was a very well written book but not really my thing. (Sorry

liv).

* Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach (1975) -- Northern California, Oregon and Washington have succeed from the US to from the nation of Ecotopia.

* Kim Stanley Robinson's Three California's --Three Novels each set in different future Orange County, California. I haven't read these in part because they only seem to be available in trade paperback, and that's expensive for a book I'm not sure I'll like. Maybe I'll try the library

* Always Coming Home By Ursula K Le Guin -- This book is hard to explain, it is rather anthropological. It is about the Kesh who "might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California." The book has collections of there stories and songs, as well as one woman's story, and some notes on there culture.

* Sliders (1995-2000) A TV series where a group of people form our world travel to many alternate San Fransiscos. I've seen a few episodes but didn't really like it

* Much of the work of Philip K Dick -- I haven't read much of this because I found what I have read to be very depressing.

*The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy (1989) --Set in San Fransisco after a plague has destroyed civilization as we know it.

*Remake by Connie Willis (1995) -- set in future Hollywood.

There are more (If you go Here and search "Science Fiction" you can get a long list of other things most of which are science fiction. That is also not a complete list, because it doesn't include most of my list)

If there is any science fiction set in California that you think I might like to know about, read or watch please let me know.