Back (and Engineering Infinity)

Alright. I'm in the new city, and I've started the new job. Haven't found a place to live yet, but that'll come. I've had lots of opportunity for reading (and lots of relaxing time away from the computer), so it's time to get back to it.

I'm going to say a few words about Engineering Infinity, the anthology by Jonathan Strahan that I mentioned earlier. I found this one to be a bit patchy. There were some stories in it that I really enjoyed, but just as many that didn't really grab me.
 
It's billed as hard science fiction, but Strahan notes in the introduction that the anthology "moved away from pure hard SF to something a little broader." I actually think this is perhaps its biggest weakness. It isn't laser-focussed, so I couldn't really read it as a bunch of different authors poking around the same ideas. Conversely, it wasn't really broad enough to entertain me with variety. This kind of thing works fine in best-of-the-year collections, where each story is a gem, but I think I prefer more (or less) focus in my general anthologies.

As I say, though, it did have some stories in it that I really enjoyed:

-- "The Invasion of Venus", by Stephen Baxter. What happens when aliens rock up in our solar system, but they're only here to exchange fire with other aliens living on Venus? I think I liked the sheer size of the conflict in this one, coupled with the way it was told from the very personal perspective of two old friends on Earth. Interesting also because I'm not usually a huge fan of Stephen Baxter.

-- "The Server and the Dragon", by Hannu Rajaniemi. A sentient server in a galaxy-wide network drifts lonely and unused around a star on a very wide orbit, until it is one day visited by a (digital) dragon. I'd call this one a hard space opera story, and that's probably why I liked it. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.

-- "The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees", by John Barnes. A novel take on the panspermia theory. Cool things here were the central idea -- big and dramatic, and a new take on an old bit of SF -- and the partially-explored background of one of the main characters, an android created for the purpose of solar system exploration. I don't think I've read anything else by John Barnes, so I'll have to see what I can find.

Honorable mentions go to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Watching the Music Dance" (a nice bit of anthropological SF), Peter Watts' "Malak" (perhaps the most typical hard SF story of the bunch), and both Karl Schroeder's "Laika's Ghost" and Charles Stross' "Bit Rot" (for the sheer gonzo joy of them).

Genre accessibility

You'll have to forgive me a bit of silence around here, oh imaginary reader. I'm in the middle of organising a move interstate, and apparently I'm very bad at packing. I'm hoping, though, that when I arrive in the new city a) I'll have lots of writing time, because b) I'll have no friends.

One writing-related thing has grabbed my attention recently, though: the description of a panel that Charlie Stross is going to be on at Boskone 48, an SF convention in Boston from February 18-20 (found on Charlie's blog).

Has SF Eaten Itself?

(Charles Stross, Kathryn Cramer, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Allen M. Steele)

Has our genre consumed itself so that we now cannot imagine a future for it? One of SF's lasting strengths has been as a continuing conversation between writer and reader -- and between writer and writer. Each new idea has spawned replies and elaborations, pushing the genre along. But is it possible that SF today is so deep into this conversation that it's lost its appeal to the neo? (Could this lack explains some of the attraction of fairly elementary SF such as that on TV or in anime?) Do you need a master's degree in SF history to really appreciate modern SF?

I'd really love to be able to attend this one. It's a topic I sometimes talk over with a good friend of mine. She's a big reader of literary fiction, and a writer herself, and I've got a lot of time for her opinions. She (sometimes) enjoys SF from the '50s and '60s, but anything modern basically leaves her cold. That saddens me a little, because I'd love to share some of my excitement with her.

Unfortunately, I don't currently have any insight to offer on the topic of genre accessibility. Too much brain-space taken up with packing, perhaps. With any luck I'll come back later and try to talk through some of my thoughts. I guess the question I wonder about most is this: if it is true that SF is no longer particularly accessible to new readers, what (if anything) can we do about it?

(And if, by any chance, you're going to attend that panel at Boskone, I'd love to hear about what is said!)

A bit of variety?

I'm still pondering what it is that I enjoy so much about anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan, and a thought occurs. Virtually all of the ones I have read contained science fiction and fantasy stories. So perhaps the thing I like best is a bit of genre variety?

This makes Engineering Infinity an even more interesting prospect, since I'm pretty sure it's a pure hard SF anthology.

How much for the women?

It occurs to me that I haven't read nearly enough novel-length science fiction written by women. I'd like to fix that, so I'm looking for suggestions.

I've got a copy of Dust by Elizabeth Bear waiting for me. I've enjoyed her shorter stories a lot, particularly "Boojum" and "Mongoose" (both with Sarah Monette), "Tideline" (short story Hugo winner in 2008), and her story in METAtropolis. I should also read some Connie Willis, but I confess that I'm not a huge fan of time travel stories (funny, really). Maybe Bellwether? How about something by Nancy Kress (Probability Moon?) or Nicola Griffith (Slow River?)? They both had stories on the Hugo ballot last year that I enjoyed.

Have you got any recommendations?

An ode to Jonathan Strahan

It was Alastair Reynolds and Revelation Space that got me back to seriously reading science fiction. I picked that book up as a present for my mother, who had been complaining to me that she hadn't read any good SF in a long time. Once she'd read -- and enjoyed -- it, I gave it a crack myself, and got hooked. I then tackled all of Reynolds' back catalogue, but after that I stalled. I didn't know anyone who read (modern) SF, and I wasn't sure how to find out what was good. 

I hit on the idea of buying some short story anthologies as a way to sample a bunch of authors quickly. One of the first ones I grabbed was The New Space Opera, edited by -- you guessed it -- Jonathan Strahan (and Gardner Dozois). I loved it. Which was a pretty big deal for me; I'd managed to convince myself somewhere along the line that I didn't particularly like short fiction. Boy was I wrong.

Long story short (heh!), I started hunting out other anthologies edited by Strahan. Through these I discovered many of authors that I'd now rank amongst my favourites: Karl Schroeder, Ted Chiang, Jay Lake, Peter Watts, Sean Williams, and probably more besides. I have consistently enjoyed the anthologies that Strahan edits, and I await the next one eagerly.

Of course, I don't only read anthologies edited by Strahan, but I have found that my tastes seem to align most closely with his -- his are the anthologies I enjoy most consistently. He had help, from Gardner Dozois in particular, but I think Strahan deserves most of the credit for getting me interested in reading (and, by extension, writing) short SF.

The question I now realise I have no answer to is this: what is it about Strahan's particular choices that I so enjoy? "What do you look for in a story" is probably a pretty tricky question for him to answer, but perhaps I'll get a chance to ask him one day anyway? In the meantime, I've got a shiny new copy of his Engineering Infinity to read, and I'm going to see if reading it with that question in mind brings me any enlightenment.

While I do it, I'm also going to dream about one day having a story in something he has edited. Because that would be ace.

It's holding me back, man.

It's been almost two months since SSWriMo ended, and I think it is fair to say that my writing progress since then has been less than stellar. Partly that's the season, sure, and partly it's finishing up a job and preparing to move cities. Mostly, though, I think it's the need to edit the stories I wrote last November that's stopped me from carrying on. Whenever I think I'd like to do some writing, I think that first I need to edit those stories. Since I'm not super excited about doing that, I end up picking up a book or watching some television instead.

I've decided, therefore, to give myself permission to leave those stories unedited for now. I will come back to them, but at the moment I think it is more important to just keep putting words on the page.

I am very keen for feedback on what I wrote, though. If you're at all interested in reading my SSWriMo stories -- "Beacons", "Arteries" and "Dreams of Flying" -- drop me an email or leave a comment on this post. I'd sure appreciate it!

Things I like #3: writing for the sheer joy of it.

I just got through reading a short story called "Zeppelin City", by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn*, and it was very timely. I've been thinking about the purpose of genre fiction recently, worrying over questions of worth (if you can't write a worthy story, should you write one at all? What about a clever story?). "Zeppelin City" crossed my path at exactly the right moment because it didn't fret itself over any of that. It was just plain good fun.

It felt to me like the authors were having a grand time writing it. It was full of things that are cliched enough to be dangerous (brains in jars! Rhetoric-spouting revolutionaries! Daring girl pilots and grubby-but-cute engineers!), but written with such affection that you had to forgive them. Or perhaps congratulate them. Because brains in jars are cool, right?

I feel like I don't read this sort of story very often. Probably because it is a tricky thing to pull off successfully. I remember feeling the same way after "The Hero", by Karl Schroeder, and it was enough to send me chasing off after some of his books. I seem to recall it happening during parts of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series, too. The sense that the author wrote something because they thought it was cool, and that I was having fun reading it for exactly the same reason.

So there you go, another thing I like: writing for the sheer joy of it.

* "Zeppelin City" was originally published on tor.com, where you can still read it. I read it in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Four, edited by Jonathan Strahan.