Just very, very busy… (not with writing, in case you had any doubts. Mostly %%% RL). Working a bit on the novel though progress is damnably slow. So far have three main characters, cool worldbuilding, and no plot whatsoever.

On paper, Sources of Vietnamese Tradition  has a laudable goal: “[to] provide an essential guide to two thousand years of Vietnamese history and a comprehensive overview of the society and state of Vietnam. Strategic selections illuminate key figures, issues, and events while building a thematic portrait of the country’s developing territory, politics, culture, and relations with neighbors. The volume showcases Vietnam’s remarkable independence in the face of Chinese and other external pressures and respects the complexity of the Vietnamese experience both past and present”. The book’s hefty 600+-page contents promise a wealth of information and insight into Vietnamese society.

(warning: family-history bias)

Thing is… I guess they do provide that wealth of information, but due to a number of factors it ends up being a bit biased–first off, I appreciate the exclusion of any text they couldn’t find a primary (untranslated) source for, but that means that they spend most of the period of Chinese domination (roughly the first ten centuries, though it’s more complicated than that) presenting… the point of view of the Chinese on the Vietnamese, which is well and good but a tad worrisome. Also, the “famous” texts of Vietnamese literature (like The Tale of Kiều) end up excluded, on the basis that anyone interested in those can track them down; again, I understand why they did that, but that means you have to buy extra books if you want those texts. You also get  a very curious view of “tradition”, since the emphasis on existing transcribed texts with an attribution means any folk renditions or anything not from the (literate, scholarly) aristocracy is excluded; which produces a definitely skewed view of history, and ends up with a very different “feel” from what I know (which is handed down mostly from family). To be fair, it’s hardly specific to this book, but is a problem I have with the series of “Sources of Asian tradition” in general.

Due to the coverage, you have entire periods where things happen in a bit of a puzzling fashion, for instance Lê Lợi‘s rebellion and his relationship to Nguyễn Trãi; again, possible family bias showing there, but I felt you never really got a sense of either of those men and the turmoil of the court of Lê Lợi ‘s successors, and it’s a bit hard to imagine Vietnamese history and modern Vietnamese perception of that history (at least in that bit of a the diaspora I’m familiar with) without them. And, uh, do yourself a favour and go read someone else’s account of modern Vietnamese history (from the independence onwards), because I felt the book didn’t really capture the ins and outs of what was happening in Vietnam in that time period. Again, this might all be my personal feeling, and it is also because, to some extent, I was expecting from a book that size something fairly comprehensive, which, in all fairness to them, clearly is not what the authors were out to produce (and they make that clear at the onset, from the preface).

Would I recommend this book? Mostly, yes, because there are plenty of great texts here that you won’t find anywhere else, and I learn tons of things about Vietnam I didn’t know. However, if you’re just looking for an entry point into Vietnamese history and culture, I’d recommend with reservations.

“The Weight of a Blessing” is one of those stories that took me a long time to write–by my standards, that is. I first had the idea for it around August or so, walking around in Brittany with the H; I wanted to do something about “refugees and virtual realities”.

(spoilers after the cut, please read the story first!)
Continue reading →

–Fundraiser for Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. Edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, this promises to feature people forgotten from “official” histories. Writers will include Ken Liu, Amal El-Mohtar, Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl… and me. Please donate to make it possible! [1]

-Zen Cho on Malaysian SFF in English. Lots of fascinating-looking writers in there.

-Carl V. Anderson reviews On A Red Station, Drifting. I just go “wow”. Also appears he’ll spearhead a discussion of “Immersion” next Sunday over at his blog.

<hr>

[1] Incidentally, I find it amusing that the theme of “forgotten history” or “rewritten history” drives this anthology, as much as it drove my latest Clarkesworld story.

So…  I’ve now finished reading How to Eat by Nigella Lawson, and I have a bit of a dilemma. I love Nigella Lawson’s style and her no-nonsense approach to cooking; and her advice and general tips, but… but the book itself has very few recipes I can use, mostly because so much of what’s in it requires either milk, buttermilk, cream, and/or alcohol, none of which my digestive system can bear (I do butter and cheese fine, and small quantities of milk in pastries that are well cooked, and that’s about my upper limit). Does she have any later books where the reliance on these ingredients isn’t as important? I got the impression that one of her later books (can’t remember which one?) drew a bit more from South and East Asian cooking? And Nigellissima is Italian food?

Just a note that my angry short story “The Weight of a Blessing” is now up at Clarkesworld. This was a really tough story to write, for much the same reasons as “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”, though this one took months to get right…

Have a look and tell me what you think?

Still snowed under, but I did want to make sure this was out there as people were filling out their ballots…

Hugo nominations deadline is on March 10th; I’ve already put up an awards recommendation post  (and supplementary recs here). But since the Hugos include non-fiction categories, I thought I’d add a few more recommendations in that direction:

Best Fanzine:

Both the World SF Blog and Europa SF have done a great job of taking SF past the Western Anglophone bias that still dominates the field: Europa SF is mainly focused on Europe whereas the scope of the World SF blog is a bit larger. Both have interesting and varied features, and I think their nominations would add diversity to the field.

Best Fan Writer:

Abigail Nussbaum and Aishwarya Subramanian are two blogs I read regularly. They both write fiercely intelligent, detailed posts on genre (and non-genre) books, and have led me to many an unsuspected treasure.

(btw, because people have asked: yup, On a Red Station, Drifting is eligible for the Best Novella Hugo; if you’re a Hugo or Nebula voter and you’re interested in reading it, contact me–for Nebula voters, it’s in the SFWA forums as part of the Nebula Awards voting packet).

Paul Weimer was kind enough to ask me to take part in a Mind Meld on Food in Science Fiction vs Fantasy. You can find it here; lots of food for thought (pun intended :p).

Haven’t been posting a lot, and it doesn’t look like things are going to get better (RL still throwing everything it can at me 🙂 ). I’m on twitter a bit more if you want to know what I’m up to–those days it’s mostly funny articles, cute animal pictures and the occasional rant.

I’ll try to have author’s notes up for the upcoming “The Weight of a Blessing” in Clarkesworld. And then I’ll go back to hibernating…

In the meantime, have a cute video of an otter shooting basketball hoops (thanks to Farah Mendlesonh).

And because good news obviously don’t come alone… Please to announce that I’ve sold my Xuya story “The Weight of a Blessing” to Clarkesworld. I started this while on the Rainy Writers’ Workshop in Brittany, and had a long… reflexion period to basically come to the conclusion I needed to take a baseball bat to my existing scenes and change the existing structure to better reflect the plot arc. This is part of my “Vietnamese in space” series with the Rong people (the same as in “Immersion”). It’s also, er, a somewhat angry story about colonialism, cultural legacies and virtual realities. Should be in the March issue of Clarkesworld.

Many thanks to Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Tricia Sullivan, and the WIB writers’ groups (Dario Ciriello, Traci Morganfield, Juliette Wade, Keyan Bowes, Genevieve Williams) for their sharp eyes and wonderful advice.

Snippet:

On her third visit to Sarah—on the last occasion that she sees her daughter, even if it is only in V-space—Minh Ha says nothing. There are no words left, no message of comfort that she could give her.

Instead, she takes Sarah’s hand, holds it tight until the last of the warmth has leached from her body into her daughter’s—and braces herself for the future.

#

Even in the visitors’ V-space, Sarah looked awful—thin and wasted and so ethereal that Minh Ha wanted to take her daughter home and ply her with rich dish after rich dish to bring some fat back on her bones. But, of course, it was too late for that—had been too late ever since the much publicised arrest and the even more publicised trial, all the grandstanding that had brought a taste of bile in Minh Ha’s throat.