The Book Smugglers have been running a series called SFF in Conversation. Today they’re hosting my piece Visibility Matters, which talks about Invisible and is loosely based on the keynote speech I gave at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.
Go forth and check it out!
A number of folks have been sharing the story about Clare, a seventeen-year-old girl who was kicked out of her prom. Reading Clare’s account, it sounds to me like there were two factors:
There’s an update here, which asks people not to harass the prom coordinator, and notes that the moderators for the prom’s Facebook page were deleting comments and eventually deleted the whole page. Neither Mrs. D nor the administration have made any sort of statement about the incident.
So here’s the thing. I’ve got 40 years of experience as a guy. For the record, we men aren’t a bunch of delicate flowers who swoon at the mere sight of a girl’s legs. A young woman dancing doesn’t scar us for life.
The dads were worried about the young men at the prom thinking impure thoughts? Do they remember what it’s like to be a teenage boy? At that age, a stiff breeze is enough to make you think “impure” thoughts. It’s like Pavlovian condition gone mad. School bell rings? Boner! Sit down in the cafeteria? Boner! Adjust your seat belt? Boner! Trying to maintain my dignity as a teenage boy was like a neverending game of whack-a-mole…
Or is it that we don’t trust the boys to control themselves? That we think men are monsters, transformed by the mere sight of a girl’s thigh into slobbering, sex-crazed monsters, helpless to resist the Curse of the Visible Girlflesh.
Clare notes that she and her friends were grossed out by some of the Dads who were ogling them from the balcony. Which would be creepy as hell if we held men in any way responsible for their own actions, but of course we can’t blame them. Because apparently seventeen-year-old girl legs are made of man-kryptonite.
There’s nothing new in the attitudes here. We blame and punish the women, because it frees men from responsibility. But as a man, I find it insulting, tiresome, and damaging as hell.
Ann Leckie‘s debut SF novel Ancillary Justice [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] has gotten a lot of buzz since its release. The book won the Clarke Award, the BFSA Award, made the honor list for the Tiptree Award, and is a Hugo Award finalist for Best Novel. I’m pretty sure it was also a Nebula finalist, tied for an Oscar, and won this year’s Super Bowl.
It’s an ambitious book, spanning centuries of future history. The protagonist Breq is all that remains of the Justice of Toren, an artificially intelligent ship with thousands of ancillaries — human bodies all controlled by the ship’s mind. Justice of Toren was essentially a single entity with thousands of bodies, and Breq was one of those ancillaries.
This isn’t a Star Trek-style Borg hive where individual personalities are subsumed into a collective; the host bodies are basically dead, without minds or personalities of their own. They’re “corpse soldiers.” Justice of Toren is one being who gets caught up in political crossfire and finds herself reduced to a fragment of what she was: a lone human body, limited and alone.
The first part of the book alternates between present and past, plunging the reader into the story and slowly providing the background. This is not a book you should try to skim. After I finished reading, I found myself wanting to immediately go back through the opening chapters again and pick up on everything I’d missed the first time.
I love the way Leckie plays with identity. Anaander Mianaai, the long-lived Lord of the Radch, is similar to Breq in that Mianaai has many human bodies, all linked. I won’t spoil things here, but I really liked the revelation of where the ongoing political conflict originated, and Mianaai’s role in it.
A lot of the conversations and reviews I’ve seen focus on Leckie’s treatment of gender in the book, both as a cultural construct — gender is treated differently depending on which culture Breq is immersed in at the time — and as a source of personal confusion. What is gender for a being with hundreds or thousands of different individual bodies? Breq often stumbles over gender identification and pronoun use.
It creates an interesting effect when a character Breq has referred to as “she” is then described as “he” for the next part of the book. I found myself rethinking their interactions, the dynamic between them, and more.
I don’t know that the book does anything truly new or revolutionary with gender, but it certainly does more than most mainstream SF these days, and I appreciate the way Leckie thought about it throughout the story.
Leckie also examines colonization, the destruction and assimilation of cultures, the drive for continued expansion and conquest, and more. It’s powerful and often painful. Aspects of that cold, calculating cruelty are what eventually launch Breq on her quest for vengeance.
I have mixed feelings about Breq’s mission. She’s out to kill as many of Anaander Mianaai as she can, but she also knows she probably won’t be able to take out more than one or two of Mianaai’s bodies before being caught and killed herself. Given that Mianaai has hundreds or thousands of bodies, I kept wondering what’s the point? Given the setup, that’s like avenging yourself on someone by cutting her fingernail.
It may be that Breq was simply lost and knew full well that this was a pointless mission, one that was little more than suicide. But if so, I wish that had been made a little bit more clear. (Or maybe I just missed it.) I do like that the ending went in a different direction, and how that set things up for the next book.
I should also mention the character of Seivarden Vendaai, who ends up accompanying Breq. Vendaai undergoes a powerful transformation as well, being a soldier a thousand years out of her own time. She’s a snob and a drug addict, completely burnt out and bitter. I very much appreciated seeing her growth — and at times, her backsliding — over the course of the story.
All in all, a thoughtful book with strong worldbuilding, and a particularly impressive debut. Ancillary Justice is book one of a trilogy. Book two, Ancillary Sword, comes out in October of this year. You can read an excerpt of the first book here.
I haven’t read all of this year’s Hugo-nominated novels yet, and I wouldn’t presume to pick a winner, but I think Leckie is a strong contender.
We went out to see Amazing Spider-Man 2 over the weekend. I was nervous going in. Partly because the previews suggested we were getting Electro, Rhino, and Green Goblin. (Because overloading the story with villains has worked so well for other Spider-Man movies.) And the reviews I’ve seen have been iffy, at best.
It wasn’t a perfect film, but I enjoyed it. Andrew Garfield opened the movie with wise-cracking, web-slinging Spider-Man. Watching him take care of low-level bad guys was just fun. I like Garfield’s Spider-Man (anyone else now visualizing a fat orange cat in a spider-suit, going on about Mondays and lasagna?) a lot better than the last incarnation. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised.
And now, on to the spoilers…
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Cry “Havoc!”, and let slip the dogs of Friday!
Today, I’m handing the blog over to author Julie E. Czerneda for the cover reveal of her omnibus, Species Imperative [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], which comes out September 2 of this year.
I enjoy Czerneda’s writing. I reviewed book one of this trilogy here and book two here (some spoilers in the reviews). I read and enjoyed the third book as well, but for some reason I either didn’t post a review or else I forgot to tag it so I’d be able to find it later.
Julie is also a wonderfully warm and welcoming person, and I’m happy to help spotlight her new project!
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Presenting … Species Imperative!
I’m delighted to share with you the shiny new cover for DAW Books trade omnibus edition of Mac’s story. Thanks, Jim!
Those of you familiar with the original trilogy, Survival, Migration, and Regeneration, know the first of those titles was released in 2004. My first hardcover. My biggest, most ambitious work-to-date and a story near and dear to my biologist’s heart. Luis Royo did those covers, capturing pivotal moments in the story, and I loved them all. They were also covers where Luis and I, through his agent and interpreters (I don’t speak Spanish), worked together more than ever before. For each, I’d send 20-30 photos of the background setting, making sure to provide less familiar details such as rock structure and Arctic ice. In return, Luis provided those fantastic illustrations.
For the omnibus, however, it was time for something completely different. My output since 2009 having been a fantasy novel, albeit a Very Big One, I wanted it abundantly clear to readers new to Species Imperative that they’d be getting not just science fiction, but hard sf as well. Fans of this story called themselves biogeeks. Why? Because the scientific study of life runs rampant on every page and is crucial to the plot. Couldn’t be any other way. Mac studies salmon. It’s also what I intended from the start. This is speculation based as solidly as possible on known fact, that takes its leap into the unknown with eyes open. Here aren’t dragons — but you will find aliens wearing funny hats. For good reason, as you’ll see.
I’ve been a huge fan of the artwork of Kenn Brown and Cris Wren (also dear friends) for many years and had the privilege of working with them for the covers of ReVisions (DAW Books) and Summoned to Destiny (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). (Fun aside, I first met Kenn and Chris during my trip to Vancouver to launch Survival, for Mac’s Norcoast Research Facility is set on that glorious coastline.) Together they are Mondolithic Studios and please do spend time going through their gallery. Wow!
For that’s exactly what I did, quickly spotting an image Kenn had created for the cover of a past Discover magazine cover. Kenn worked closely with DAW to modify that starting point into the wonderful cover you see here. I couldn’t be happier.
As well as the cover, there’s a new introduction by Rick Wilber, a staunch supporter of Mac & Co since they came out and another friend. A new dedication, Biogeeks Unite!, and some kick’n new blurbs (thanks, Jim!) In sum, this is as much a celebration as it is a new edition, and I cannot wait to hold it in my hands. I’m sure I’ll sniffle.
Most of all, I hope you enjoy.
In one month, my daughter and I are flying to Melbourne, Australia, where I’m joining Ambelin Kwaymullina, Sharon Mosely, and Danny Oz as guests of honor at Continuum.
To say I’m excited would be an understatement. The Continuum folks I’ve talked to so far have been great, the convention looks like a lot of fun, and on top of that, it’s my first time to Australia. I’ve been looking forward to this trip all year, and will be taking a little extra time after the convention to look around a bit.
Now, I consider myself a well-educated person, but I have to admit that my knowledge of Australia is a little limited. Here’s what I do know:
So I throw myself on the mercy of the internet. Help me, hive mind.
And what else should I know that I’m forgetting to ask about?
Wrote a long blog post. Torn about whether or not to post it. So for now, have a photobombing cat (source):
I’ve had several conventions ask me for Guest of Honor suggestions lately, so I figured I’d do some public brainstorming. The following are some folks I think would make excellent SF/F convention or conference guests.
Who else would you like to see as convention guests of honor? I’m particularly interested in suggestions for folks who — for whatever reason — might otherwise be overlooked.
I’m gonna start with a rather self-serving link to Sword & Laser, which just posted an Author Spotlight with me. Personally, I think this qualifies as a Cool Thing, particularly the little whiteboard-animated me in the beginning of the video.
