So there’s this idiot individual who wrote this piece for The Guardian calling for a year in which no new books by men be published, only books by women. (If you read through the entire piece, I suggest you invest in a platter of cheese first. It will go well with all the whine.) And I thought the Tempest in a Chamberpot proposal was ridiculous.
Apparently she’s really serious. Continue reading
The awards I’m talking about, of course, are the David Gemmell Awards. As I’m sure you know, there are three. The Legend Award for the best novel of the year. The Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut novel. And the Ravenheart Award for best fantasy book cover.
I’ll post the short lists below after a few comments. I’m going to read as many of these as I can, especially among the Morningstar candidates (with one exception, which I’m not going to touch).
The Legend Award is another matter. The reason is that most of the Legend nominees are parts of series, and they’re not the first installment. The exception is Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, which I started reading last night. I intend to read some of the others, but I may not make it by the deadline as I haven’t read the books that precede them.
And regarding the other award that’s generating some attention, I’ll try to read as many of the nominees for that one as possible. I’ll read all of the short fiction nominees (that I haven’t already read) and will blog about some of them. The same is true for Best Related Work. Again, with one exception, I’ll try to get to as many of the novel nominees as I can, although as soon as my attention starts to drift, I’ll move on.
Here are the Gemmell nominees. Voting closes on July 17. Continue reading
And so we come to another issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. This was one of the strongest (and grimmest) issues I’ve seen in a while. There are three pieces of fiction along with two poems and a great illustration by Serbian artist Vuc Kostic. His dark style is a perfect fit for the stories contained herein. Continue reading
The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers
Mike Ashley
Dover Thrift Editions
ebook and print both $4.50
Amazon B&N
So in a previous post, I wrote about forgotten women writers from the early days of the science fiction pulps. While I was reading Partners in Wonder (the book under discussion in that post), I came across a review of The Feminine Future. Several of the stories in the latter were specifically singled out by Eric Leif Davin in the former.
I immediately picked it up. It didn’t cover quite the same ground as Partners in Wonder, which looked at women authors in the early pulps. In other words, the time period it was concerned with began in 1926, when Hugo Gernsback launched the first pulp devoted entirely to science fiction, Amazing Stories.
Science fiction had of course existed long before then, although it was called scientific romance. (I find it interesting that scientific romances were considered respectable, science fiction was, and at times still is, viewed as trash.) Mike Ashley doesn’t confine himself to the pulp era. He gathers stories from women writers going back to the popular fiction magazines of the late 1800s.
Here’s what the book includes: Continue reading
Fantasy author Tanith Lee passed away on Sunday, May 24 at the age of 67.
Lee was the author of a number of works, many containing a strong erotic component. Her works include The Birthgrave Trilogy, The Flat Earth Series, The Wars of Vis, Red as Blood or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, The Secret Books of Venus and many other works. Her writing is characterized by lush, descriptive prose. Lee’s work has won both the British Fantasy Award (Death’s Master, 1983) and the World Fantasy Award (“The gorgon”, 1983; “Elle Est Trois, (La Mort)”, 1984). In 2013 Tanith Lee was awarded the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Trigger Warning: Humor, Snark, Truth, Thoughts That Might Be Different Than Yours.
In case you’re wondering, yes, the title of this post is a riff on the James Tiptree, Jr., story “The Women Men Don’t See”. And yes, there is a book review buried in here. I’ll provide the pertinent information about the book later. First, though, some context.
I’ve heard for years that there were virtually no women writers in science fiction and fantasy before [insert date du jour here] because they were discriminated against by all the men in the field and had to use masculine pseudonyms or initials if they wanted to write sf/f. The actual date when this began to change is something of a moving target and depends loosely on the age of the person making the statement.
This belief is pretty widely held in the field, to the point that it’s almost holy writ. And while men have spread this myth, women tend to be the loudest in voicing it. Continue reading
I hope everyone has a happy Memorial Day weekend. Be safe if you’re traveling. For those of you who don’t live in the US, this is the official start of summer, at least in Texas. I don’t know about states in the northern part of the country. The public schools still have a week to go, but it’s mostly final exams and graduations.
Summer classes for me will start on June 1. I’m not teaching the first summer term, but I will the second. I’ll still be making sure the labs run smoothly no matter what.
I’m hoping to get caught up on a few titles I’ve started and never finished. I’m hoping I can get more reading done than I have been lately. I’m also hoping to get back on track writing fiction on a regular basis. I’ve got one story I need to finish by the end of the week.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve got a major post I’ve been working on. I managed to finish it today. It will go live Tuesday with a followup on Wednesday. After that, I’ll review the latest issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.
That’s about all I’ve got for an update. For those of you who are celebrating, have a safe and happy Memorial Day.
Finally I would like to thank all members of the military for their service.
“Arimetta” was originally published in Kadath #4 in July of 1981, something that isn’t listed in the ISFDB. It was reprinted once in Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances, The Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman, Volume 4 (Night Shade, 2003). The latter is where I read it. It’s the type of story set in the mountains that Wellman became known for.
This is a fairly short tale, one that’s loosely connected to the John the Balladeer stories. Earl Wood is wandering the mountains and ends up literally singing for his supper in the cabin Big Don Imbry shares with his wife and daughter. John taught Earl how to play the guitar, which makes him immediately welcome.
One of the songs Earl plays is “Wildwood Flower”, which he learned in Arkansas. The song is an actual folksong, not a fictional one. (Here’s Johnny Cash singing it.) Welllman changes the name of one of the flowers mentioned from “aronauts” to “arimetta”. That line has been changed in all the recordings I can find of it online to “the pale and the leader and eyes look like blue”.
“Arimetta”, from what I’ve been able to determine from my Google-Fu, is a woman’s name from that region of the country that’s no longer common and doesn’t appear to ever have been. Continue reading
“The Golgotha Dancers”
Manly Wade Wellman
ebook $0.99
This story was originally published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales. It’s now available as a short story in electronic format.
This is an early Wellman, so it doesn’t have the strong sense of place as his later work set in the Southern mountains, such as the John the Balladeer stories. Still, it’s a solid piece of fiction in its own right, even if it isn’t Wellman’s best work.
Just so you know, below the CONTINUE READING line, there will be spoilers. Continue reading
Manly Wade Wellman was born on this day in 1903. He’s best known for his stories of John the Balladeer, a minstrel who wandered the southern mountains with his silver stringed guitar. Other series characters include the occult detective John Thunstone and Hok,
I don’t recall when I first became aware of Wellman, but it had to be in junior high or early high school. Quite possibly a John The Balladeer story in an anthology. We moved in the middle of my sophomore year, and the small town we moved to had a little second hand book shop. Among the treasures I found there (Green Lantern #1) was an almost complete run of F&SF from the mid 70s to the early 80s. Of course I bought them all.
These issues had a number of short stories by Wellman, many of them stand-alones. I devoured them over that summer between my sophomore and junior years. Wellman’s incorporation of Southern and mountain folklore was unlike anything I’d read. I’ve kept my eye out for his work ever since. Later, when Nightshade published its five volume collection of Wellman’s work, I bought those.
So tonight, after everyone goes to bed, I’ll raise a glass in Wellman’s memory and read some of his work.