-I’m guessing by now most people will have seen the Amy Chua piece on the Washington Post, about why Chinese mothers are superior. I don’t have much to say about it other than “batshit crazy Asian mother”–and yes, I have an Asian mother, so I can speak from my (admittedly limited) experience. I can see some of the points, and some things Amy Chua mentions are certainly familiar from my own childhood, though not pushed quite this far. My TV time was limited; so was my video game time; neither of my parents were particularly happy when I brought home bad grades, and yes, both of them always pushed me to go further because they believed I could do better. And I’m glad they did it; I’m glad they placed a higher value on education than on sparing my feelings, and nurtured my ambition and drive–to the point where I thought of doing something as crazy as writing in a second language and getting away with it.
But, seriously, not allowing your children to be in school plays, forcing them to play a musical instrument and tormenting your daughter until she gets the piano piece right? Wow. That’s some serious going south here.
Allow me to dig up quintessential Chinese wisdom here, in the person of Confucius: “To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.” Ie, balance and perspective. Something that seems to be missing from all the horror stories about Asian moms (there were quite a few flying around on the internet in the wake of that article).

-And, in a lighter vein: Mature people truths (via Cat Rambo). Some of these are oh-so-painfully true.

-Finally, I’ve posted (with permission) on the SFWA forums “Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life”, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s awesome story about expatriation, identity and what it means to be an immigrant in a strange land. Recommended by Richard Horton in his year-end summary of Interzone, and generally quite made of awesome. (and I’m not only saying that because Rochita is my friend). Well worth a read if you have forum access.

EDIT: apparently, the Amy Chua thing is only an excerpt from a larger book, which is intended to deal with the problems of her education system as well. Mea culpa.
EDIT #2: and, apparently, the WJS just quoted the most controversial part of Chua’s book without bothering to add a corrective, because controversy makes for more readers. Great. As I said on LJ, I feel like hitting something, preferably a WJS editor.

Gardner Dozois has picked up my Xuya story “The Shipmaker” (which is in the current issue of Interzone) for his Year’s Best.

Er, wow? Particularly pleased, as this was the first story where I attempted to put Vietnamese on the map of my alternate universe–there aren’t that many Vietnamese main characters in spec-fic[1], and it’s high time I did my bit to remedy this.

If you need me, I’ll be in the corner, jumping and squeeing…

ETA: and it looks I get to share a TOC with Yoon Ha Lee’s “Flower, Mercy, Needle Chain”, which is one of the absolute best SF stories I read this year. W00t.

We’ll start with “The Shipmaker”, which is in issue 231 of Interzone, now out in the wild. It’s the Jason Sanford special issue, with three stories by him (you can see previews here, here and here), and an interview. The remaining stories are by Matthew Cook, and by me.

(no spoilers, but this makes more sense if you’ve actually read the story)

“The Shipmaker” is part of the Xuya continuity, as is evidenced by the references to Xuya itself, the vast Chinese galactic empire to which both the main characters Dắc Kiến and Hạnh belong–and to the Mexica Dominion, the interstellar descendant of the Aztec Empire. I’m using “dominion” deliberately, to highlight the hegemonic rather than territorial structure (the real-life Aztec Empire was hegemonic, exerting influence rather than seeking to incorporate territories into a global administration).

I generally don’t pick names that carefully, but here I made a couple deliberate choices: Dắc Kiến is a traditional name for Vietnamese boys (it means “acquired view”, “knowledge”), and the fact it was given to a woman reflects the changes in the society. Hạnh is a very common name for girls, meaning “with good conduct, behaving well”, and it’s deeply ironic given how Hạnh herself turned out.

About accents: I waffled a bit on this one, but in the end I decided Vietnamese diacritical marks were very important for Vietnamese speakers, but were just going to be confusing (not to mention hard as heck to typeset), and I stripped them from the story.

Near the end, there are several references to fundamental events of Vietnamese history: Le Loi/Lê Lợi threw off Chinese domination and founded the Lê dynasty. He was supposed to have a magical sword, given to him by a tortoise (Lake Hoàn Kiếm in Hà Nội, the Lake of the Returned Sword, is where the sword got taken back by the tortoise afterLê Lợi refused to return it).
One of the (many) names for Hà Nội during its history was Thăng Long, which means “the dragon with deployed wings”, hence the image of the dragon.
And you can read more about Huyền Trân here.

Đại Việt is one of the traditional names for Vietnam, notably under the Lê dynasty (the current name of Vietnam was actually given in the 19th Century, following a series of events that didn’t take place in the Xuya continuity). It means ‘Great Viet” (Việt itself means “Vietnamese”, pretty much).

It’s the story I was talking about here. There’s a snippet, too (the beginning has changed a bt, but not drastically).

Many thanks to everyone who critted it on OWW: Ruth Nestvold, Pete Aldin, Christine Lucas, Cécile Cristofari, Georgina Bruce, L. K. Pinaire, and Mark Hunken. (and yup, I do still owe some crits to some of you guys. Apologies. The wedding threw things off schedule pretty drastically, and I’m still struggling to catch up with various stuff).

This is the first published Xuya story that has Vietnamese main characters (and an alternative Vietnamese history, though I was forced to remove a lot of it to make the story comprehensible). It’s also a companion piece to “Shipbirth” (forthcoming in Asimov’s in Feb. 2011).

And you can also get Dark Futures, Jason Sizemore’s anthology of dark dystopias, which includes my Chinese SF horror “Father’s Flesh, Mother’s Blood” as well as contributions by Jennifer Pelland and Ekaterina Sedia.

Meanwhile, I’m told Interzone 230 (which contains “Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders”, aka the Aztec multi-POV steampunk) has shipped. There’s a comment thread over there, if you’re interested (and have got a copy. I’m still at the “waiting impatiently” stage).

Er, wow? I am *so* glad Interzone is back to full colour. It looks awesome! (plus, mechanical men. And fallen gods. And Aztecs. You can’t really go wrong with any of those).

And I would also seem to have sold my Aztecs-in-space SF story “Shipbirth”, part of the Xuya continuity, to Asimov’s (do you detect a trend in story themes? :=) ). Many thanks to everyone who took a look at it on OWW: Allison Starkweather, Cécile Cristofari, Terra LeMay, L.K. Pinaire, Christine Lucas, and Ilan Lerman. And an extra dose of thanks to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, who read it in record time and helped me fix a very important plot point.

I will be going for a liedown and more novel brainstorming.

So behold the brand new spiffy Xuya page: all you’ve ever wanted to know about Xuya (well, not quite yet, but it does have a few pointers about the chronology, where the stories fit in there, and a few items of general interest).
Enjoy!

BTW, since I’ve locked the comments on the page, this post here is as close as it’s getting to the official question thread–in the (unlikely[1]) event that you have any interrogations about Xuya-related stuff, ask in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer.