-Friday 5pm: Newcon Press Dark Currents launch

Launch of the new anthology Dark Currents, which has fiction by a number of awesome people like Tricia Sullivan, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lavie Tidhar, Neil Williamson, Sophia McDougall, … (and my story “The Bleeding Man”). A lot of contributors will be at the launch, so here’s your chance to get that anthology signed!

-Friday 6pm: What is I?

We all think we know who and what we are, but the more science delves into the nature of ‘I’ the more ‘I’ seems to disappear. Is consciousness just a figment of our brains, and if so, where does that leave us?

-Saturday 11am: Non-Anglophone SF

What is the SF scene like outside English-speaking countries? Do they have their own thriving scene, or is it dominated by Anglophone SF from outside? Why does non-anglophone SF have such a small weight in the UK and US markets – is it down to the difficulty and cost of translations, or is there some other reason for this? Are the problems unique to SF, or present in all genres? And what can we do to change it?

-Saturday 9pm-10pm: Book Signing

I’ll have a few copies of Obsidian and Blood and probably a few other anthologies. Feel free to drop by and chat!

-Sunday 1pm: Youth and Youthfulness in SF

Science fiction, in its dominant form, is an American invention, and stereotypically has the outward-looking optimism of a young country in its DNA. How can contemporary sf reflect the best of that tradition without over-simplifying its worlds? What is the role of writing YA and writing diversity in keeping sf new?

-Monday 11am: What TV shows would we like to see?

What shows would we like to see made but probably won’t be?

-Monday 2pm: “The data deluge and the end of science”

Are our data gathering abilities outstripping our methods for analysing the results? Are our models of causal links inadequate for complex systems? Is scientific advance going to stagnate because of this, or will new tools, such as Bayesian statistics and network theory, allow continued progress?

In between panels, I’ll be in the bar, as usual 🙂

… is that, even while getting home relatively late, there’s still a good half hour of wonderful sun to enjoy while walking in a park.

*happy writer*

And the much-delayed pictures (the H still holds the pictures hostage on his computer. I filched a few that looked pretty).

The first two are of the Ngũ Hành Sơn (mountains of the Five Elements), better known in English as Marble Mountain: it’s a major Buddhist temple complex near Đà Nẵng (centre of Vietnam), which has a slew of pagodas and shrines on moutaintops, as well as temples carved within caves that are truly impressive. Easily my favourite place (though not very favoured by Western tourists; the crowd was mostly local) of the trip: serene and unearthly, and with fabulous views over the surrounding countryside. Easy to see why they built the temples here.

And this is the tomb of Khải Định, the second-to-last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty: Huế is surrounded by the mausoleums of all the emperors–they’re all in very different styles, and this one is a striking fusion of Eastern and Western (see the octogonal pavillion vs the crosses that line the terraces). Inside, it looks a lot like a Vietnamese Versailles, with lots of ornate ceramics on the walls, and it has a golden likeness of the Emperor (the actual body is somewhere under the palace) and a shrine to honour his memory.

That’s all from me–tommorrow it’s back to novel brainstorming and cooking 🙂

Just a heads-up that the Intergalactic Medicine Show Awards Anthology is free on Kindle this weekend, and that it includes stories by Peter Beagle, Eugie Foster, James Maxey, Marie Brennan, Eric James Stone, Jason Sanford, and many many more awesome writers (and also my story “Horus Ascending”, about a sundered AI and a dying colony).

You can download it here (I can’t see every amazon country, but it looks like it’s free in France, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this promotion was valid in every amazon country).

Sorry for the radio silence, I wish I could say the week has been productive, but mostly I’ve been going on too little sleep, with very little coherence as a result…

To tide you over into the weekend, have an online story: “The Heartless Light of Stars” over at Daily Science Fiction, aka the Sài Gòn story, and last of my contribution to the Numbers Quartet (but there’ll still be Nebula Award nominee Nancy Fulda’s awesome “Godshift” to round off the sequence).

Meanwhile, I’ll be off to brainstorm more Jade in Chains, which has morphed into Thick Waters considering the way the story is developping (yeah, the whole “blood is thicker than water” thing, and a few other clever allusions in there. I’m going to need to research the history of the Seine a bit). It’s occurred to me, reading stuff over the week (two of Kameron Hurley’s awesome posts on Gender Equality, in addition to her novel God’s War, which messes with your head in all the right way, and one from Requires Only That You Hate on female strength in popular UF series), that one of the reasons I’m having trouble with this book is that I’m trying to fit in a typical UF narrative with, er, someone that’s not best suited to it? My MC’s main reaction to anything is unlikely to be ass-kicking, and she’s not very much the lonely vigilante type either. It occurs to me I need a new plot, or a new MC. Or both…

So, a long, long while ago, I wrote a story called “A Bitter Taste”, a pseudo-Hindu fantasy about war and destined victories (hint: it doesn’t quite turn out the way you’d think 🙂 ). I subsequently sold it to an anthology called Scheherazade’s Facade, which was about characters who didn’t follow gender conventions (my story had a hermaphrodite). The TOC included awesome people such as Tanith Lee, Sarah Rees Brennan and Paolo Chikiamco. That was the good news. The bad news… well, the anthology never happened, because of the economic situation at the time, and I thought that was the last I’d hear from it.

I should have had more faith. Michael M Jones, the editor, never gave up on it; and he has found an agreement with Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press to publish it. The catch: we have to raise enough money to pay everyone involved: the costs for Circlet, Michael, the contributors and the cover artist (and I hope I’m not forgetting anyone at this stage). Michael is aiming for pro rates; and the prizes include anthologies from Circlet Press as well as more classical bits (like e-copies of the anthology, physical copies, bookmarks).

It’s already past the halfway point, but every little bit helps: if you want to donate, please go here. Thanks in advance!

< sarcasm >
I don’t usually post anything about politics on this blog, but I did want to point this out: if you’re one of the French presidential candidates, aka the ones who have been repeatedly bashing on immigration and foreigners and generally centering the debate on pretty hateful xenophobic stuff, you shouldn’t be surprised that some madman with a gun decides to start shooting minorities they don’t approve of.
< /sarcasm >

(on a not-sarcastic note, my heart goes out to the families of the dead, whether it’s the three soldiers or the schoolchildren and the teacher. It’s a truly devastating thing to go through a death of a loved one, especially without rhyme or reason. And I hope they catch whoever is behind all three shootings before they can make more victims. But I have absolutely no pity for the politicians who think fanning a climate of xenophobia is the way to win a presidential campaign)

Best moment of the day: the H and I finish filling the washing machine. We’ve been using a lot of rice bowls lately, and we have trouble fitting them all in: like most washing machines in France, ours has a space at the bottom that’s specifically for plates, with little grooves holding them in place (which also prevent you from slipping in anything that’s not round and flat-ish); and a smaller space on top that’s used for glasses. Rice bowls don’t fit in at the bottom, and sort of fit in at the top (while taking the space of 1.5 glass, which is problematic). The H pulls back, looks at the washing machine, and says, “You know, I bet Asian washing machines are set up differently, because this was clearly not meant for rice bowls at all.” LOOOL

And today, we went and celebrated the Nebula nomination (yes, I know, fashionably late), and I used the opportunity to drag him to Chinatown Olympiades for the first time, one of the biggest Chinese restaurants in the XIIIe (which turned out to be kind of busy a Saturday at noon, lol). I introduced him to their dim sum menu (which is extensive compared to what you get in a lot of Paris Chinese restaurants), and we had a very pleasant meal altogether.

Afterwards, we joined the queue of people in the Asian food stores, and bought a 5kg bag of the 2012 crop of jasmine rice. *happy cook*

–Deathless: I loved Catherynne M Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, but was never really convinced with the other adult book I attempted from her (Palimpsest). This, however… is glorious. It’s a retelling of a Russian fairytale (the Death of Koschei the Deathless), though that doesn’t really matter for your enjoyment of the book (I only found out about this afterwards).
Set in Communist Russia before WWII, Deathless tells the story of Maria Morevna, who sees more clearly than everyone else the cracks around the world: this destines her to be the bride of Koschei, the Tsar of Life, locked in an endless war with Viy, the Tsar of Death. It starts out like a fairytale (three birds transform into men and come for three brides), and then very quickly becomes something else, a mixture between myth and history: the creatures of myth are also affected by the rise of communism, and one of the book’s best sections is set in Leningrad during the war, chronicling the slow decline of a city under siege. Valente uses the narration to question several of the fairytale tropes, from the submissive and erased women to the role of villains (I loved Baba Yaga’s role in the denouement). And the writing is utterly lovely without being too purple, a thing of beauty from beginning to end. Very much recommended.

–The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi: many things in there are rave-worthy–top-notch worldbuilding, brimming with ideas, sizzling plot… It’s set in a future version of our Solar System, dominated by the AI-like Sobornost. Jean le Flambeur is one of the greatest thieves, but he was caught by the Sobornost and put in a Dilemma Prison, fighting endless duels against copies of himself until his mind has been wiped into compliance. He hasn’t expected Mieli: working for the Pelligrini, a mysterious goddess-like entity, Miele has need of a thief–and she breaks Jean out of jail.
Their quest will lead them to Mars, to the Oubliette, which overthrew its rulers in a bloody Revolution, and is now one of the main enclaves free from the Sobornost. As I said, lots of cool ideas. I loved the concept of gevulot, the privacy settings of the Oubliette: if someone doesn’t open their gevulot to you, you might not even see them, and contracts rule everything from how you see people to the sharing and recording of memories. Plus, it’s full of geeky tidbits, like the keys being generated from the root node of a tree, and robots that can steal time…
But what actually fuels my deep, abiding love for this book are the Arsène Lupin references. I grew up on a steady diet of stories of the gentleman-thief (and I loved those as much as I loved the Sherlock Holmes books), and the book is full of them. One of the main characters, Isidore Beautrelet, is actually taken from Maurice Leblanc’s L’Aiguille Creuse, and the plot has regular references to Arsène Lupin scenes, such as the Christian Uruth episode, which, as I dimly recall, is a mash between two short stories (can’t remember the first, the second is “Herlock Sholmès Arrives Too Late). And there’s Thibermesnil and Raoul (d’Andrésy) and Raymonde (de Saint-Véran), and Paul Sernine, an alias of the protagonist who hands out nine Watches to nine friends (among other things, Lupin’s alias Paul Sernine Prince Rénine, a near-copy of other alias Paul Sernine, is the male protagonist of a collection of short stories called The Eight Strokes of the Clock)… I’ll stop gushing now, but this is very much awesome stuff, and I’m so glad it’s in an SF book! (and it has a sequel! Which I’m so waiting for now.)
From a quick google search, I’m kind of surprised how few review sites picked up on that angle, though, which is glaringly obvious to me (and anyone who’s read L’Aiguille Creuse). I was wondering–how well known is Arsène Lupin in the UK/US? Has Maurice Leblanc been translated into English? (here, he’s practically a household name).

-Rose Lemberg on Feminist Characters (aka how agency isn’t only limited to the Warrior Woman trope), and Alex Dally MacFarlane on Female Friendships and Why They Matter.
–Master of the House of Darts is up against The Wise Man’s Fear in Book Spot Central’s Annual tournament: vote early, vote often, etc. (especially since I suspect it’s going to take me a miracle to reach the second round given the competition…)

Meanwhile, I think I have a first scene for the book, except that it doesn’t have enough magical fireworks. Will go add them in.