New Books

Lots of friends with new books out this week. Because apparently I don’t have enough to read already? At this rate, I’m never going to reach the summit of Mount To Be Read!

Morgan Keyes’ Darkbeast Rebellion [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is a middle-grade fantasy, the follow-up to Darkbeast, which I enjoyed and reviewed here.

Martha Wells has a Star Wars book out about Princess Leia, called Razor’s Edge [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], set between the events of Star Wars and Empire.

Anton Strout’s Stonecast [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is the second book in his Stonemason Chronicles. There may or may not be were-jaguars.

Laura Anne Gilman’s Soul of Fire [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is the second part of the Portals Duology, following Heart of Briar.

Marie Brennan has put together a collection of essays on writing fight scenes, called (appropriately enough) Writing Fight Scenes [Amazon | B&N].

Elizabeth Bear’s novella Book of Iron [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] is a standalone prequel to Bone and Jewel Creatures.

Finally, the tenth issue of Seanan McGuire’s serial Indexing [Amazon] has just been released.

As always, please feel free to suggest other new books I’m forgetting, or just share what you’re reading and enjoying right now.

Cool Stuff Friday

I’m thinking about trying to make this a recurring thing, because the world needs more positive. So here, have some random goodness…

Going Off the Grid. Sort of.

I’ll be getting up at ridiculous o’clock in the morning to take my wife in for surgery. Nothing life-threatening, but she’ll be in the hospital for three days. So I have no idea how often I will or won’t be online for the rest of the week.

On the bright side, this also means I’m taking at least the next three days off from work. With how the past few days have gone at the day job, this is a very good thing. I just wish it was for a happier reason.

There’s one problem, though. The past few times she’s gone in for surgery, I’ve had a Seanan McGuire book to read. It’s become a tradition. And I have no McGuire to read!

Maybe I should ask my wife to reschedule the surgery for after Half-Off Ragnarok comes out. Yeah, I think that might be best…

Zombie Baseball Beatdown, by Paolo Bacigalupi

I needed something fun and relatively quick to read last week. Fortunately, I had a copy of Paolo Bacigalupi‘s Zombie Baseball Beatdown [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] that I picked up at Book Expo of America.

This is a middle grade book about baseball and the U. S. meat industry and racism and bullying and comic books and of course, the zombie apocalypse. It’s the first book I’ve read from Bacigalupi, and it’s rather different from his other work. From the official description:

“Rabi, Miguel, and Joe are practicing baseball near their town’s local meatpacking plant, and nearly get knocked out by a really big stink. Little do they know the plant’s toxic cattle feed is turning cows into flesh-craving monsters … With no grownups left they can trust, Rabi and his friends will have to grab their bats to protect themselves (and a few of their enemies) if they want to stay alive.”

The bad news is that while the violence is rather cartoonish, it would still give my son nightmares, so I won’t be reading this one to him. The good news is ZOMBIE COWS!

There’s actually a lot going on in this book. Bacigalupi takes some no-holds-barred shots at the meatpacking industry in particular. The description of the cows crammed into the pens, or the way they’re butchered, is far more disturbing than the zombie scenes. While I’m fairly certain our meat processing corporations haven’t actually unleashed the zombie apocalypse, the rest of the details ring nauseatingly true.

The protagonist, Rabindranath, is great. He’s a math geek, and I loved the way Bacigalupi described things through his eyes, the way he looks at the other players on his baseball team and sees their stats like power meters from a video game, their strengths and weaknesses all laid out for him.

Of the three heroes, Rabi, Joe, and Miguel, only one of the three is white. Without getting too preachy, Bacigalupi examines what it’s like to be a kid in America who doesn’t look “American.” They send Joe out at one point because, being the blond, blue-eyed kid, he has the superpower of being unnoticed and invisible. The fact that Miguel’s family is undocumented also comes up, both the consequences and the pain and fear Miguel carries every day.

In the end though, everything comes back to zombies. Kids with bats and balls chasing zombies, then turning around and running like hell from other zombies. Trying to get help against the zombies, only to run up against police officers who don’t take them seriously and lawyers more concerned with making the problem go away.

I’m curious what a younger reader would think of the story, how much they’d pick up on the commentary vs. how much they’d just get into the zombie-smackdown.

Oh – and I loved Bart the zombie-cow.

Anyone else read it yet? What did you think?

Interview with a JOF: Meg Totusek

A quick commercial announcement: through 11:59 PST tonight, if you buy or own the Kindle edition of Libriomancer, you can pick up the audio book for $0.99.

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Meg Totusek is one of the moderators of the Journeyplatypi of Fandom group. As a big platypus fan myself, that was enough information for me to put her onto my list of Generally Awesome People.

Meg was kind enough to talk about conrunning, fandom, conflicts, and more of the behind-the-scenes stuff fans don’t always see.

Also, I’m told her mother has promised to kick my butt at WindyCon and make me eat nothing but healthy food if anyone is mean to Meg, so please be nice!

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1. For those of us who might not be familiar with SMOFs and JOFs, what are the Journeyplatypi of Fandom, and how did you come to count yourself among this august company?

The Journey Platypi are a group of con runners similar to the SMOFs (and some of us happen to be both!) who converse on Facebook about a wide variety of topics including registration queues, facilities, marketing, harassment policies and really anything that our members want to talk about. We work really hard to make sure that the group has a positive feel — we being myself and four other awesome mods: Warren Buff, Cathy Mullican, Crystal Huff and James Bacon — so that hopefully the group has a better chance of being productive. The Platypus became our mascot after a discussion about keeping things gender neutral, and because we love ridiculous things.

I’ve been in fandom literally all my life, but really got involved in running cons on a higher level in the last few years, and with JOF more than a year ago when it started up. I couldn’t tell you an exact date because the Facebook logs won’t tell me any more than that and I was too busy to note it myself.

2. You said you focus on running cons and fixing problems. Tell us a bit more about what’s involved there, and what kind of problems you work on.

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Diversity in SFF

I’ve been very much appreciating the #DiversityInSFF conversation on Twitter for the past week.

As in any such conversation, there have been a few trolls and some attempts to derail, not to mention some at-times tacky self-promotion, but overall I think it’s been a good discussion.

I haven’t read every single Tweet, but I think I’ve come pretty close. Here are some of the highlights I remember:

  • Tor.com added the following to their submission guidelines, “We want our stories to represent the full diversity of speculative fiction, and encourage submissions by writers from underrepresented populations.”
  • The Guardian published an article titled, “It’s time for science fiction to face up to discrimination,” arguing that SF/F has to stop ignoring the diversity of our own world. While there were some problematic aspects to the article (quoting only male authors), it’s nice to see the discussion getting picked up by a major news outlet. (The comments, on the other hand, are often cringeworthy.)
  • Lightspeed Magazine announced a “Women Destroying SF” issue. I don’t know if this was directly in response to the #DiversityInSFF conversation, but either way, I love that they’re taking shots at the “Oh no, girl cooties are destroying SF!!!” nonsense.
  • Mary Robinette Kowal put together a survey asking Who are the fans of speculative fiction?
  • Romantic Times posted an article about 5 Diverse SFF Novels You Should Read. (I have mixed feelings about my own novel being included in that list.)
  • People shared resources for encouraging and increasing diversity in the genre, including:

There was much more, including discussion of panel parity, accessibility issues, gender, sexual orientation, DC’s ongoing failures when it comes to diversity in comics, movies, small press vs. large, the need for translated fiction, and so on. I’ve also seen the discussion picked up elsewhere.

Along related lines, Rose Lemberg has started an #accessiblecons conversation on Twitter, talking about how to make conventions more accessible (an ongoing problem in fandom).

Will Twitter hashtags fix the world? Obviously not. But I strongly believe talking about problems, and more importantly, listening to the people pointing out those problems, is the first step to solving them. There are editors and agents who changed their guidelines as a result of this conversation. Authors reconsidered their own choices. Readers and viewers of SFF who took another look at their preferences and decided to check out something new.

If you’re on Twitter, I strongly recommend reading through some of the #DiversityInSFF conversation. A fair amount of it is 101-level, but in my opinion, there’s some very good stuff.

Interview With a SMOF: Catherine Schaff-Stump

Catherine Schaff-Stump is an author, a professor, a conrunner, and so much more. She’s published short fiction as well as the YA novel Hulk Hercules: Professional Wrestler [Amazon | B&N].

Catherine is also a self-identified SMOF, so I asked if she’d be willing to talk a bit about her experiences working behind-the-scenes, her perspective on fandom and inclusivity, and her thoughts on our community.

I’m hoping to do a few more of these interviews, because I find the conversations helpful and informative. And because you probably get sick of just hearing me babble all the time.

Thank you, Catherine!

1. Tell us about yourself and your entry into the Wide World of SMOFs.

The first time I heard the word SMOF used about myself was when I was casually talking to some Wiscon planners late night in a Con Suite. I mentioned that I was involved with Mindbridge, the organization that runs some of the cons in Iowa, and at that time, someone asked us what we were talking about, and my conversation partner said, “She’s Mindbridge, and we’re SMOFing.”

What we meant in that conversation was that we were talking about convention planning. There are certain members of Mindbridge who shoulder a bigger share of planning and running conventions, and we meet the definition of SMOF because we do this. I’d say there are actually about 10 “full-time” SMOFs in the Mindbridge Organization, people you can count on to shoulder many of the projects through administrative or personnel management. There are many more “part time” SMOFS who run conventions certain years, or volunteer for huge jobs like Con Suite. Some of the cons call them different things, like AnimeIowa calls their SMOFS gym leaders. I don’t know why, but the idea is the same–people who work hard to pull off conventions.

As the president of the Mindbridge Board, in my state, I am seen as a super SMOF. Really, the power of the board president resides in making out the agenda for our monthly meetings, but the illusory power is that some people think I can make lasers come out of my eyes and fry people I dislike. Which I’ve never done. No, never. However, the board is the public face of Mindbridge, so we try to look like real business people. Which is hard when you are super geeks just out to have conventions to have a good time.

Because we wanted to be more involved in the convention planning scene, four of us from the board tried going to a con planning convention a few years back, and met more SMOFs, but we actually didn’t go back to the convention again, because we actually thought our systems for running cons were pretty good, and we’d gone to a lot of expense traveling to the convention without learning a lot that was new. So, we chat with other convention runners at their cons, and bring back good tips and trade ideas.

2. You lie. I have totally seen you do that laser-eye thing! Okay, that explains what a SMOF does, but what does “SMOF” actually mean?

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A. C. Crispin’s STARBRIDGE, Reviewed by Jackson

The eight-year-old and I just finished A. C. Crispin‘s book Starbridge [Amazon | B&N | Kobo]. I read this series a long time ago and remembered enjoying them a lot. We’ve read some fantasy to Jackson, including my goblin books, but this was the first science fiction novel I read to him. I wasn’t sure he’d like it, but I was hoping…

I admit to skimming over a few of the romance/smooching scenes, because eight-year-old interests and attention span. And I’m sure I mangled some of the alien names, but fortunately, Jackson didn’t know.

The best thing I can say about the experience is that when we got done, Jackson immediately asked if we could read book two next.

What follows is his review, prompted by my questions.

What is this book about?

It’s about a girl named Mahree and a boy named Rob and an alien named Dhurrrkk’ who go out to save a bunch of different alien species, including the humans.  It also has Simiu (dog species) and Mizari and Chhhh-kk-tu, and those are only the ones I can remember right now. I think there are 12 kinds of species in that book. And one is so easily frightened that seeing a different species can make it die!

What were the most exciting parts of the story?

I think the most exciting part was when Dhurrrkk’ challenged that other Simiu to a death-challenge.

Who was your favorite character, and why?

I liked Dhurrrkk’ because, well, I can’t really describe it. I liked how he acted. Like at the beginning when Mahree was telling him about human cultures, and when she made a joke, and he was like huh? I don’t understand. What is a joke? And then he tried to make a joke later.

Do you think it would be cool to meet other aliens? What would you like about it?

Yes! Because I’d be able to meet new species and then I’d probably be able to get a super high-tech sword or something like that.

A lot of the characters talk about how important communication is. Do you think they’re right?

Yes, I think they’re right. If you can’t communicate, then pretty much everyone will get into a bunch of fights. Jackson then demonstrated various fight moves, including fake-punching himself in the face.

Mahree made a dangerous decision to try to communicate better, partly because she wanted to be special. Do you think she made the right decision? Would you do something like that?

No, because it almost killed her.

Did you like the ending?

Yes.

Who should read this book?

Everyone!

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