between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Rod Rees' The Shadow Wars (The Demi-Monde: Spring in the UK) arrived in ARC form a little while ago. Well, I started reading it for review, and tweeted a few egregiously awful quotes, and the (in)famous Requires Hate got in on the act...

The Storify of the Untethered Breasts:

"Odette gave a wiggle and was pleased to see that her untethered breast jiggled in a quite charming fashion."

Someone passed on a link to the cover of the latest Kindle magazine: Rape In Wonderland.


WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

Ronan Wills discusses Hounded by Kevin Hearne, and his view on the banality of urban fantasy.

Nerds of A Feather discusses grim/dark iterations in fantasy:

[W]hat's the purpose of all the violence and cruelty in the art we consume, and specifically in fantasy fiction? When is it acceptable and when is it not?

A certain author turns up in the comments to defend his precious, as is becoming tediously de rigueur in his case, and diametrically opposed to the response of Joe Abercrombie to criticism as quoted in the post. (I have Important Thoughts, natch, on violence and fantasy, but they'll keep.)

(No, really, they'll have to keep. I've reached my procrastination limit for today.)


And! If you've made it this far, you deserve some reward. Stylist Turns Ancient Hair Debate On Its Head:

By day, Janet Stephens is a hairdresser at a Baltimore salon, trimming bobs and wispy bangs. By night she dwells in a different world. At home in her basement, with a mannequin head, she meticulously re-creates the hairstyles of ancient Rome and Greece.

Ms. Stephens is a hairdo archaeologist.

Her amateur scholarship is sticking a pin in the long-held assumptions among historians about the complicated, gravity-defying styles of ancient times. Basically, she has set out to prove that the ancients probably weren't wearing wigs after all.

And a Dutch television show enlists two men to undergo simulated labour contractions.

Gemma Files on Zero Dark Thirty:

As ever, Bigelow always manages to always frame things for maximum impact and wring incredible suspense out of even the most foregone conclusions. I keep seeing that last track through the post-”Geronimo, for God and country” wreckage of bin Laden’s hideout, where she makes sure that the team’s one Muslim member is the person who gets to see all the broken heads and shot-out eyes up close and personal. And Maya, in her last appearance, sole passenger on a troop transport plane, crying because she doesn’t know where she wants to go, and probably not being entirely aware of it. So basically, what I’m saying is fuck you, fellas; whoever ends up getting that Oscar this year needs to know both that Bigelow is the motherfucker who found this place, and that this is the one to beat.

N.K. Jemisin on Gamefail bluescreen:

It’s obvious the game developers didn’t think much about how the characters in their xenophobic fantasy world would logically react to having a foreigner and a woman — and this is definitely a patriarchial, xenophobic culture — as their much-lauded savior. I don’t think the developers thought much about the characterization for this game at all, let alone on a level that acknowledges the impacts of race and gender and other socioeconomic factors, and their intersections, on worldbuilding. But here’s what’s irritating: the game pays lip service to these issues, even though it doesn’t engage with them on a deeper level.

The comment thread on Where Are The Older Women? is still going strong at 110 comments: lots of useful recommendations and hardly a troll in sight. Which makes me rather happy.

Anyway. Spent yesterday and last night hanging out with a friend who's heading off soon to Brussels to intern at Parliament. We mainlined The Dark Knight Rises (not awful), Resident Evil Retribution (awful: has not even the vaguest glimmer of plot) and Dredd (AWESOMESAUCE), about which probably (possibly) more later.

Now I must get my arse in gear and do more with my day than merely move shelves around...

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Oh, wait. I forgot to log Wednesday's exercise. Mile in 12:00, treadmill; 10K exercise bike, 29:00. Some weights.

Mass: 103.5kg.

Books 2013:25-26


25-26. Kerry Greenwood, Murder on a Midsummer Night (2008) and Dead Man's Chest (2010).

Another pair of lovely, funny mysteries starring Phryne Fisher. The plots do not make with the logic and there are bunches of loose ends, but I don't really care.

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Today's interesting links:

Colour photography of early 1900s Paris.

Amazons of the Ukraine.

Lesbian SFF Romance.

Foz Meadows deconstructs The Kickass Damsel:

Over and over again, we limit the competence of our female characters by placing them in perilous scenarios, not to test their skills, but to show how thoroughly they still need to be rescued; to make them vulnerable enough to fall in love, because if we wrote them as being emotionally well-adjusted and romantically inclined from the outset, they’d be deemed too feminine (whereas if we wrote them aromantically, they wouldn’t be seen as feminine enough).

India will shed few tears over the end of British aid:

The crucial issue is the contribution made to India's development – and this is really not about aid but trade and investment, where the news is not good. Minute dribbles of UK aid cannot hope to work PR magic in India when the UK government is seen trying to bully the Indian government into accepting completely unjustifiable intellectual property clauses that will increase essential drug prices in a trade agreement, or pushing the interests of its own companies in getting extra protection and compensation in the face of laws that protect Indian citizens who are adversely affected by the investments, or indulging in protectionist practices against Indian exports.

Amal El-Mohtar blogs World Fantasy.


Genevieve Valentine on Sagan Day.


The most beautiful set of cat pictures on the internet.

Genreville on In Praise of the Implausible:

Ng’s orchids are implausible. They’re also beautiful. I think we need more startling beauty in our speculative fiction, more giggling, more wonder. And plausibility is in the eye of the beholder, too; after visiting lush, tropical Singapore, where enormous plants really do grow practically overnight, I find Ng’s imagery only a step or two removed from reality, whereas if I’d never left the northeastern U.S. I would struggle much more with the idea. As Western SF/F publishers become more aware of their diverse audiences, they also need to realize that catering to one culture’s idea of “plausible” is just as restrictive as saying that protagonists need to be white English-speaking men.

Icky sexist "epic fantasy pin-up calendar" organised by Rothfuss &co. The male gaze reigns triumphant, and the female gaze is ignored. Sigh.


Some sadly wrong soul with a blog is wrong about the purpose of book reviews on the internet:

A professionally-written, legitimate review should not feature the reviewer's personal opinions. In fact, I would personally go so far as to say that personal opinion - when it does not address the technical merits of the book that influence reader comprehension - should never enter into it at all. No reader gives a damn - nor should they - what the reviewer thinks about the theme.

A portrait of someone frightened by intellectual integrity and popular/democratic discourse? Someone who thinks the only point of a review is to sell/notsell books? Alas for them.


Have some excellent volcano pictures.


And happy birthday, etumukutenyak.

Strange Horizons has started their annual fund drive.

I admire SH a lot - and I've learned a great deal from their reviews editor, Abigail Nussbaum, in the time I've been contributing reviews - so I'm spreading the word. Also, if they raise USD $10,000, they'll pay more for reviews, so there's an element of self-interest involved...

Science confirms reading literature is good for your brain:

Moreover, the study showed that simply by asking the readers to alter their method of reading--from “leisure” to “analytical”--they could drastically alter the patterns of neural activity and blood flow within their brains. The study could have implications in the way reading affects the brain and how we train our brains to be better at things like concentration and comprehension.

Jo Walton, Death, Gods, and Repartee: Roz Kaveney's "Rituals":

Roz Kaveney’s Rituals occupies a very interesting space that not much else has been interested in exploring. It’s a little like Good Omens, and a little like Waiting for the Galactic Bus, and now that I have three of them I can declare them a genre—and say this is a splendid example of “Witty Blasphemy.” Or maybe “Adorable Blasphemy” would be a better name?

Genevieve Valentine, Dredd:

Its questionable moments aside, it's solidly written, and sometimes even approaches poignance. (Once, Anderson and Dredd break through the wall onto a small balcony; the lingering, silent shot of Mega-City at night is beautiful and calm...until Anderson realizes there's no exit and they'll have to go back the way they came.) If you can handle a body count in the hundreds, lovingly-detailed gore, and a movie in which heroics are proven useless in the greater scope, it's got some clever moments, more tension than many other SF action flicks, and smart lead characters on both sides of the fence.

Kate Elliott on Omniscient Breasts:

Imagine a female pov character is going along about her protagonist adventure, seeing things from her perspective of the world as written in third person. She hears, sees, considers, and makes decisions and reacts based on her view of the world and what she is aware of and encounters. Abruptly, a description is dropped into the text of her secondary sexual characteristics usually in the form of soft-focus Playboy-Magazine-style sexualized kitten-bunny-I-would-fuck-her-in-a-heartbeat lustrous-eyes-and-nipples phrases. Her breasts have just become omniscient breasts.

This is what I mean when I speak of the male gaze. The breasts are no longer her breasts, they have become the breasts as described by the omniscient heterosexual male narrator (in the person of the writer) who is usually not even aware that he has just dropped out of third person and into omniscient to describe her sexual attractiveness in a way that caters to a heterosexual male audience.

Karen Healey, Revealing, isn't it?:

What women criticising sexual harassment and the response to it at various SFF cons actually are:

- unwilling to contribute to the comfortable illusion of fandom egalitarianism at the risk of their health, safety, and right to be treated as complete and whole persons deserving of respect
- ready to speak up on their behalf and on behalf of others
- refusing to take this crap

Ana Mardoll's analysis of the eleventh chapter of Prince Caspian:

Susan is crying.

Susan has been torn here to Narnia over her stated objections. She spent the night in the ruins of her old castle, crying herself to sleep as she clutched an ancient chess piece -- the one link she has left to the past. She has been marching and rowing and working non-stop for three days straight. Since she was the only one with a ranged attack, she was called upon to use serious force in order to save the life of Trumpkin. Her sister was almost killed by a bear, and in the process she was forced to consider breaching her principles against killing sentient creatures. She was nearly skewered with an arrow, had not her brother tackled her to the ground. She hasn't had a comfortable night's sleep since she arrived here, nor a pleasant meal to eat. She has committed wholly to the fight for Narnian independence, even knowing that they are very likely to die in the process. She has been shunned by Aslan.

And now she is crying.

OF COURSE SHE IS BLOODY WELL CRYING.

I'm crying for her. And the narrative won't even acknowledge this stuff. I didn't make any of the above up -- that stuff is in the narrative. But we don't get to see how it affects Susan. Even to the point where her tears are relayed by what the "others" think. But, hey, they could be wrong. Whatever. Not important. Nothing to see here. Move along.

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Possibly I should actually do the work I should be doing now.

Climbing: improvement visible on last week. Strength returns a little, but slowly. Such is always the way.

My post is live at Tor.com: Why Are Fantasy Films All About The Men?

Other links of interest:

Cultural Imperialism Bingo at the World SF Blog.

The Victimisation of Lara Croft.

Jim Hines on boundaries.

Kameron Hurley on Prometheus and white guy sperm seeding the universe.

Brit Mandelo spotlights James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon at Tor.com.

I came across Aliette de Bodard's SF short story "Scattered Along the River of Heaven" at Clarkesworld, and lo, it is good.

Gym stuff: climbing proved an improvement over Tuesday, though I repent most heartily my loss of conditioning.

Links of interest:

Aliette de Bodard's fantastic short story "Immersion" at Clarkesworld. (And I say this as someone who rarely reads shorts.)

Amal El-Mohtar on The Sandbaggers and Female Exceptionalism.

jennygadget has some thoughts after reading the first chapter of How To Suppress Women's Writing.

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What you might call a grand soft day today. Never got brighter than twilight, really. A rain like mist occasionally spattered into greater vigour. Crossing the Liffey between Connolly Station and the arse-end of college, the Jeannie Johnston down the river almost obscured by the mist: docklands disappearing in the rain. River high and swollen with the tide, lapping less than a meter or so from the bridge arches, the green weed-scent of river water at war with the faintest tang of brine.

If it's like this tomorrow, I don't think I want to leave the house. It makes my joints ache. I am too young to creak in the damp.