Clarkesworld Podcast June 2011: Semiramis (Genevieve Valentine)

Semiramis (Genevieve Valentine)

In a world beset by worst case scenario global warming, a sleeper agent in a seed repository suspects they may have been on the job for too long.

So, one of the ways I make an inappropriate reader for stories like this is I want to haul out topo maps or this or this to see if the places that get flooded in the stories are sensible choices. The author seems to have dialed up the drama on climate change for their story; I doubt it will any worst than the End Permian and I don't recall people moaning about that.

Clarkesworld Podcast June 20122: Trickster (Mari Ness)

Trickster (Mari Ness)

A trickster god talks a woman into undertaking what she understands to be a mission of vengeance. She's actually aware he is the trickster god when she agrees but I guess that's why he has his job; he can convince people even if they know who he is and what he does.

"HELL NO: The Sensible Horror Film" (Watch on YouTube)

And anyway, saying no to gods generally works out just about as well as saying yes.

Clarkesworld Podcast July 2011:Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika (Gord Sellar)

Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika (Gord Sellar)

Read by Kate Baker

A robot uprising goes swimmingly, although it leaves the robots with the question of how to feel about what they did. They seem to feel about as remorseful as most people in settler nations do.

Clarkesworld Podcast July 2011: Frozen Voice (An Owomoyela)

Frozen Voice (An Owomoyela)

Read by Kate Baker

Watched over by aliens who believe they are being helpful, a family struggles to live as they choose despite the clash between their deviant lifestyle and alien phobias.

A post I could only call

Milage varies

(and I will admit here I did not and will not read the Scalzi unless someone pays me, because I don't want to be in the position of seeing him as that guy who 'fixed' Little Fuzzy by removing its essential charm to replace it with grim&grittitude)

So, one bit

One interesting caveat concerns the main female character. In Little Fuzzy, Ruth Ortheris is a psychologist who works with the Zarathustra school department, sides with the villains…and ends up playing an absolutely pivotal role in the story. In Fuzzy Nation, Isabel Wangai is a Kenyan-by-way-of-Oxford biologist whose only role in the story is to get repeatedly humiliated by Jack Holloway, whose ex-girlfriend she is, and then forgive him. This is a telling difference. I don’t know what it’s telling us—perhaps something ironic about the changes in social mores between the 1960s and the 2010s—but it seems worth mentioning.

It's telling us two things: SF's treatment of female characters still tends to suck, even in the hands of liberal-by-the-standards-of-the-USA-authors, and also Piper was pretty unusual for his time in the way he had female characters who did important things, characters like Ruth Ortheris, Sylvie Jacquemont and Martha Dane. The main exception to come to mind is Lady Elaine, who is mainly a motivational corpse, and one could speculate Piper was making a point about the Sword Worlds with the constrained roles allowed for women there.

I was wrong

The US Sherlock Holmes TV show Elementary is actually not bad at all. Certainly better than Moffatt's Sherlock.

The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1993 (second quarter)

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index
to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/
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You know two phrases it turns out I never wanted to see together?

"Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "young adult series". Although in this case the similarity seems to be mainly regional, like how one can describe The Bear as "one of those WO Mitchell-style CanLit books."

First rule of Science Club:

We don’t talk about lack of girls in Science Club

Seen in front of Candy Candy Candy at Charles and Queen

The Agents of SHIELD count so far

SPOILERS ( Read more... )