Hugo season is among us. With it comes a lot of enthusiastic discussion about the best that the science fiction and fantasy community had to offer in the previous year. 2013 was a big year for science fiction and fantasy fans. Yesterday, I posted a list what I expect to put on my own Hugo ballot when I cast my nominations in a few weeks.
This, on the flip side, is a collection of A Dribble of Ink‘s finest moments over the past year. For writing and editing A Dribble of Ink, I’m personally eligible for the ‘Best Fan Writer’ Hugo Award, but I believe there are many more suitable writers more prolific and deserving of the award than me (think Jared Shurin, Liz Bourke, Kameron Hurley, Justin Landon, and Foz Meadows.) So, instead, just like last year, this eligibility and ‘Best of…’ post will not focus on my personal output, but instead the wonderful content I had the privilege to publish in 2013. As A Dribble of Ink‘s audience continues to grow, the community and conversation has grown around it, and has contributed positively to the ongoing discussion of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction in general.
Of note was Kameron Hurley’s tremendous “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative”, which was read over 135,000 times in 2013. Some early Hugo voters are suggesting that it be nominated for “Best Related Work,” and idea that is equally humbling and flattering for both Hurley and A Dribble of Ink.
I hope you’ll consider A Dribble of Ink when you’re making your nominations during this Hugo Award season. Read More »
Last September, in the wake of the 2013 Hugo Award announcements, I decided to put together an early draft ballot for 2014, a look ahead at what I’d already enjoyed in 2013 and hoped to see awarded at the next WorldCon. Now, with nomination period open, I am revisiting that list, with revisions.
Below are the writers, books, movies, videogames and other SFF-related goodies that, if I were filling it out today (I won’t be, I’ll fill it out in March, after I’ve had time to digest more work), would appear on my ballot. Tell me why I’m right (or, more likely, wrong), and let me know what is going to make your ballot (or would, if you’re not a WorldCon member.)
Note: New additions to the list have been marked with a red asterisk, like so *.
So, onto the awards. Read More »
Note: This article was originally published as part of Smugglivus, a year-end celebration of all things books over at The Book Smugglers. Check out the rest of the fun!
To begin the year, I set myself a challenge: read a perfect split balance of male:female authors in 2013. It was a personal challenge, and I asked no one else to follow along with me. This challenge had two purposes. The first was to provide more exposure for female fantasy and science fiction writers. The second was to expand my own tastes, to discover new authors. As 2013 winds down, I consider this challenge a success, but it wasn’t without some controversy.
In particular, the comments thread generated some salty discussion about my challenge and the idea of ‘quotas’ playing against the natural interests of a reader/critic. I read a lot of the same arguments, mostly about being ‘genderblind’, that I had once made. These arguments are so easy to fall back on, a safety net to avoid falling into blame. At first, I was quick to respond the same way, “I just read what I want to read, and ignore the gender of the author completely.” Well and true, maybe, but I started to recognize that, despite these excuses, there was a large bias (about one to three, female to male) in my reading habits. I began to ask myself why. I still don’t have an answer, but I did recognize that a conscious course correction was something I could be proactive about without needing an answer right away. Read More »
Why did Shakespeare write fantasies? Why not mainstream topics, such as histories and romantic comedies?
Before we examine this question, let us examine a few others first: Fantasies are fun! Why doesn’t everybody read them? What is mainstream? Why is a story about ordinary life considered mainstream, while an equally charming fantasy is relegated to the back of the bookstore?
I had a bit of insight into this many years ago, when I first became a writer. Through a mutual friend, I connected with a fellow writer who was hard at work on a mystery. I was writing a fantasy with a great deal of mystery elements, so this sounded like a great meeting of minds. We exchanged manuscripts and then met for coffee.
How could a staff be magical? It caused a person to teleport? How does that work? The reader isn’t going to be able to follow this without an explanation.
I pointed out a few inconsistencies in her otherwise well-appointed story. She thanked me. Then, frowning over her drink, she pointed to my manuscript and said, “In this scene here, your character uses a ‘magic staff?’ You don’t explain what a ‘magic staff’ is. How could a staff be magical? It caused a person to teleport? How does that work? The reader isn’t going to be able to follow this without an explanation.”
In that moment, I learned a tremendous amount about writing and human nature.
I learned that my novel would never be a mainstream novel, that people who lived their lives only concerned about daily life wanted to read about the issues they encountered in said daily life, and that the ideas that we fantasy and science fiction readers take for granted are extraordinary and intimidating to the ordinary reader. I was writing a novel for fantasy fans. People who already understood what a magic item was. Such people did not need explanations about the basics. They were already familiar with these concepts.
Mainstream readers are not. Read More »
I’m really grateful for Aidan’s invitation to come and guest blog here at A Dribble of Ink. When he approached me, we talked about a post on religion in fantasy, which is a rather broad topic – and one that’s of great interest to me. But as I’ve thought about it more and more, the topic has narrowed itself down to my own personal exploration of religion through the mechanism of writing. Anyone even the slightest bit familiar with my work will see that religion shows up in one form or another across my body of work, probably even more so than my other favorite exploration: apocalypse. Frequently, the two of them are hand in hand.
These days, I’m mostly known as the author of the series The Psalms of Isaak (hey, look at the religious language right there in the title!) but long before I wrote novels, I was slogging it out in the world of short stories with something in the vicinity of twenty stories published before my first novel found a home. And while one important aspect of my series is an exploration of the role of religion in human life and how it can be used as a weapon or tool, my short stories are wide-open playground jam-packed with far more opportunities to explore many of the “what-if’s” around the subject. Read More »
