–From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra. A history of Asia (*very* loosely Asia since it includes the Ottoman Empire and bits of Egypt), colonialism and the rise of nationalism/pan-Islamism/pan-Asianism, seen through the eyes of three 19th/20th-Century intellectuals (al-Afghani, Ling Qichao and Rabidranath Tagore) . I am… conflicted about this book.

On the one hand, it’s a welcome and refreshing account of the colonisation/decolonisation of Asia through the eyes of Asians–for people raised in the West and unfamiliar with the blood and greed-drenched history of colonisation, it’s definitely a worthy read, if only because it lays bare the sheer destructive scale of what the Western powers did to Asia (and it’s also worth seeing the repetitions of colonisation patterns in today’s globalisation), and the frustrated, powerless soul-searching of Asians seeking to conciliate the Industrial Revolution ideologies with their own traditions.

On the other hand… I can’t speak for the Indian parts of the accounts (though this article can and isn’t overly pleased about them), but I also found it a very frustrating book, because Mishra distorts facts to suit his theory of unified Asian resistance to the West (to cite just one of them, he cites the invasion of Vietnam by France in 1854 as a sign that China was besieged by Western powers eating into its hegemony–whereas in fact Vietnam had been independent of China for a while and the power balance in the region was a little bit more complicated), and I had no means of judging which bits were accurate. Mishra also quite obviously does not understand how Chinese society worked–to suggest that Confucianism is an alien and artificial ideology (that he grants was deeply embedded in Chinese minds, but in a tone that suggests recent embedding more than millenia-old beliefs) misses the point by a rather wide margin. On the whole, I think it makes for interesting reading, but definitely more for the quotes than for the arguments raised by Mishra.

–A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, by Ursula Le Guin: those were the first fantasy books in English I ever read, and so I’m coming back to them loaded with memories. They’re good–they’re very chewy and tackling weighty subject matters while maintaining the outward guise of epic fantasies, and the language is deceptively simple and gorgeous (though looking back at them, the vocabulary is definitely more elaborate than I remembered. I pity my younger self, parsing them through with a dictionary…).

It’s also an interesting reread: I’d never noticed when I first read them, but the role of women in them is appalling. A Wizard of Earthsea is particularly spectacular, its women being either evil sorceresses or smiling domestic goddesses, and most certainly not fit to go adventuring; but The Tombs of Atuan also has disquieting overtones of women’s proper place being in the home rather than wielding political power (Kossil being the embodiment of womanly power, and Arha/Tenar rather a powerless figure when it comes down to it). I can see why Le Guin felt motivated to write Tehanu, but again that takes the approach of making women’s work valuable in and of itself–don’t get me wrong, that’s also rather valuable and not recognised enough, but there’s no reason to forbid women to take up men’s work either…

Or, you know, not. Apparently I would seem to have a thing called a birthday today; and my surprise birthday present is a trip to London courtesy of my sis and the H (!!).
Am currently near Bayswater in a surprisingly large room–no idea what’s in store for today, but it sounds like fun.

I’m not the only one to have a November birthday: fellow authors Lavie Tidhar, David Tallerman and Lee Battersby are also November babies, and to mark the occasion Angry Robot is offering 50% off ebooks–see here for details, but you can basically net yourself all three Acatl books and the short stories in a handy ebook format.

And to tide you over while I, er, go off and not blog very much, you can find me here at Luc Reid’s blog talking about crossing over and insider/outsider writing.

Have fun! (I know I will 🙂 )

So, WFC (among other things):
-Managed to look rather odd at the EPIC launch–when asked “what was the first epic fantasy book you read?”, my go-to answer ended up being “The Iliad and assorted (Asian) myths” (everyone else went for actual Western fantasy; I felt myself going scarlet)
-Hung out at parties and had great fun, though soon wished for less noise and less population density
-Got together with Amal El-Mohtar, Tempest Bradford, Julia Rios, Katie, Bek, and Jeannine for GymCon, aka learning all about gyms, squats, planks and weight-lifting. I can’t say I’ve come back determined to join my nearest gym as soon as possible, but I no longer feel as daunted by the prospect of going to the gym, and it’s certainly made me want to try some exercise
-Gatecrashed Jeff Vandermeer’s “Lost in Translation” panel with a decided lack of preparation (Agnes Cadieux, the missing panelist, had an emergency and couldn’t make it), but managed to make it through the hour
-Had a conversation with Ted Chiang at the massive autograph session and tried not to appear too fangirl/shy (I fear I failed at both)
-Had great Chinese food (and cháo/congee for breakfast!), including awesome dim sum (I have to say this makes me even more determined to get to Hong Kong or Singapore and find the best places there), and a hot pot/Chinese fondue at 3am
-Am possibly one of the few people who went to Toronto and brought back a pair of cooking chopsticks and 10 pairs of wooden eating ones (the H and I have tourist-quality chopsticks bought in Hà Nội, obviously not meant for daily eating, and the only ones I can find in Paris’ 13th District are short low-quality bamboo ones). Kind of regret I didn’t have time to look a bit deeper and that most stuff was closed on Sunday. (have no fear, I also brought back a huge pot of maple syrup and a big bag of maple sugar–had to get back typical souvenirs after all!).

All in all, it was a great con. I got to hang out with many great people, to meet old friends and make new ones (and sign books–Obsidian and Blood sold out within the dealers’ room, much to my delight). Can’t wait for Brighton to come around!

As part of the promotion for the launch of John Joseph Adams’ EPIC anthology (more info here), you can now read my short story “As the Wheel Turns” (associated author interview is here). This is, er, another instance of a time machine story–written well over 4-5 years ago and in a style that I don’t think I could reproduce now, even if I tried. But hey, it got me into an anthology with Ursula Le Guin and Kate Elliott!

In case you’re wondering, I wrote this by drawing on the stories I read/was told as a child–it’s not strictly accurate historical China so much as a fairytale version of it, coupled with my misunderstanding a couple of things because I was very young when I heard said stories (and also the fact that Chinese culture != Vietnamese culture, though they of course share a bunch of common tropes/myths/etc.). But I still have a fondness for the story; it’s not every day you get to write a story with multiple reincarnations of the protagonist. Do tell me what you think of it.

(if you were at WFC, this is the story I read the first third from at the EPIC group reading–I know some people asked me if they could find it elsewhere, and I apologise for completely blanking on the fact that Lightspeed was going to reprint it…)

In the Tenth Court of Hell stands the Wheel of Rebirth.

Its spokes are of red lacquered wood; it creaks as demons pull it, dragging its load of souls back into the world.

And before the Wheel stands the Lady.

Every soul who goes to the Wheel must endure her gaze. Every soul must stop by her, and take from her pale hands the celadon cup, and drink.

The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales shed from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget, for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell.

No soul.

Save one.

Read more.

Just a quick post to say that I am back, having had a great WFC–more later, but major congratulations to friends Lavie Tidhar and Ken Liu for their World Fantasy Award wins (thrilled for Ken, who has done the hat trick of winning the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award in the same year with his “Paper Menagerie”, though for my money I still think “The Man Who Ended History: a Documentary” was a stronger and more thought-provoking tale).

That’s it for tonight; I shall get myself to bed…

Here’s my World Fantasy Convention schedule: this time around, lots of readings… All of this is assuming that I make it to Toronto, of course–because at the moment, it looks like Sandy and I will be making landfall in Toronto at about the same time Wednesday evening… My flight goes through Montreal, so it looks like I can make it to Canada fine, but there’s a very high probability I might end up stuck in Montreal on Wednesday 🙁

• Thursday 2:30pm-3:00pm: reading. Will be reading a longer portion from the novella On a Red Station, Drifting. Come if you like Vietnamese on space stations, food porn and strong female characters!
• Friday 1pm-3pm: group reading for John Joseph Adams’ Epic anthology (aka sharing a TOC with Ursula Le Guin and Kate Elliott, squee!). Vice President Suite (room number 1073) in the Sheraton. The Epic authors present include Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Pat Rothfuss, and George R.R. Martin, so I’m assuming it shouldn’t be too hard to find… Will be reading about half of “As the Wheel Turns”, a story that’ll also be published on Lightspeed on Nov. 6th. Aka: reincarnations, Chinese philosophy and the power of choices to shape several lifetimes

Any other times will include my being in the bar–feel free to grab me and say hi, I don’t bite 🙂

So, the H comes home tonight and shows me the picture above. “Wanna take a guess on what this is?” he asks with a (suspiciously) broad smile. I take a look. “Ratatouille?” I hazard, knowing it can’t be that.

Apparently, this is what a La Défence restaurant sold as bò bún. It has, let’s see… carrots, rice (badly cooked, according to the H), shrimps and some other unidentified vegetables that the H assured me were all Western in origin. No bò (beef) or indeed bún (rice vermicelli) anywhere to be seen.

I am not really sure whether I want to laugh or to cry at this stage…

Via Cristian Tamas, a rather cool-looking initiative: Europa SF is an English-language portal dedicated to all (non-Anglo) European SF. They have reports on conventions, articles on Dutch, Estonian, Lithuanian SF, and much much more!

Let me cheat a bit and quote from their official presentation:

Europa SF is conceived as an English-language portal of news and information from and for the European fandom, a generic site: http://scifiportal.eu (on demand will be created specific subdomains for each country/fandom involved − bg.scifiportal.eu, hr.scifiportal.eu, ro.scifiportal.eu, de.scifiportal.eu etc − and each country will manage its own subdomain).

Our central idea is to have a permanent, real-time mirroring of all European SF&F products, events and activities. We hope that all European countries with a SF&F community will become involved in this pan-European project.

Europa SF is dedicated to posting news, links and original materials related to science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, films and TV series from all over Europe. Here are the columns we suggest and their titles:

1. Editorial – a monthly, 2-4,000-character general article on European SF

2. On the spot – short articles (1,000-1,500 characters) about important national or European events (festivals, conventions, book fairs, conferences etc.)

3. News – short news (400-700 characters) on major/minor European or world events

4. Events – a calendar, just the name and the date of the event

5. Reports – 2,000-character articles about (on-going) national or European events

If our correspondents indicate there is an interest in interviews, panels, essays, films, TV series etc. we will introduce new sections to cover them.

Any suggestions and recommendations are most welcome. We need at least one English-speaking person from each European SF community who is willing to help us with this project.

BTW, if anyone is reading this from France and would like to give them a hand with the project, they could use some help…

Not much to see, sadly–I wish I could say it’s all been exciting new writing, but for the most part it’s been exciting proofreading and interviewing…
We did watch Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking. Plus points: Rupert Everett, who makes a surprisingly entertaining Holmes and who has got great interactions with Ian Hart’s Watson. Also, it was nice to see a return of Holmes’ moral principles, which have been mostly glossed over in Sherlock. Also, Michael Fassbender (who doesn’t like movies with Michael Fassbender). Minus points: the plot, which is voyeuristic and not really convoluted enough for me to forgive the “let’s kidnap and torture young women” vibe. As the H said, it was a great shame the movie lacked suspects altogether and made its conclusion pretty foregone.
I’m off to Bristolcon for the weekend, where I’ll be hanging out with Gareth L Powell, Tricia Sullivan, Patrick Samphire and Stephanie Burgis. Internet connection will hopefully be sporadic (I have a story to write!). To tide you over: go read Mari Ness’s snarky review of the pilot for Revolution (which sounded hopelessly racist and hopelessly science-light in its trailer).

–Sightseeing, Rattawut Lapcharoensap. A collection of short stories set in contemporary Thailand, by turns cynical and sharp, sad and uplifting. The opening one, “Farangs”, set on a tourist island and from the point of view of a mixed-race Thai/American local boy, is a very biting look at the industry of tourism and how it distorts local life (and you gotta love the pet pig named Clint Eastwood). There’s a wide range of narrators and experiences, and it all adds up to a lovely atmosphere. It was a very refreshing book for me on two accounts: the first is that those are literary stories, and it’s nice to be reminded once in a while that short stories don’t have to follow the SFF genre conventions to work (few of those stories feature character change, but they still depict poignant and meaningful moments); and the second, of course, is that this is Thailand written by an insider, and a refreshing antidote to White Western writers depicting Thailand as a hellhole of prostitution where Thais abuse and/or sell each other.
–The Unicorn Banquet (Le Banquet de la Licorne), Tran-Nhut. Another episode in the ongoing adventure of the Vietnamese sleuth Mandarin Tân, and his sidekicks Scholar Dinh and Doctor Pig. The structure is unusual in that it’s a series of linked short stories told at a banquet held in the midst of a storm–and that the link turns out to be the lynchpin and decision point for the main character. There are mild fantastical elements (underwater naga kingdoms, for instance), but first and foremost, it remains an excellent crime novel, and a sharp look at all the layers of 15th-Century Vietnamese society, on the eve of the Trịnh–Nguyễn war. Also, OMG food porn. I was so hungry reading about the wonderful dishes of the banquet.