Brainstorming for Jade in Chains continues: I’m now at the stage known as “index cards”, aka, write down my ideas on little bits of cardboard, align them on the big living room table, and stare until drops of blood congeal on my forehead. Hmm.

Reading some UF for research purposes (and for fun): I finished Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon over Soho, and enjoyed it a lot (even though I saw the ending coming halfway through the book). Wonderful voice, and a rather neat take on magic within London that mostly doesn’t feature vampires (OK, I lie. There are vampires, but they’re not at all dark and brooding and handsome).

Also read: Charles Stross’s Rule 34 (kindly donated by the author), and Halting State. They’re both thrillers taking place in an alternate future where Scotland is an independent republic, and struggling to find its place with respects to its British neighbour. They’re also both told in alternating second-person, which is the sort of thing you’re always advised against as a writer, though Stross makes it work wonderfully; and they’re very gritty (especially Rule 34, which has a spate of gruesome murders, and a POV character who is a total psychopath). There’s things I love and things I don’t love about them–the plot crackles along, they’re full of amazing inventive ideas (like, robbing a bank in an MMORPG? awesome!), they have strong main characters, especially strong women characters; but I have to confess they’re a little too gritty for my tastes? (I’m a bit of a squeamish reader. Yes, I know. I write fantasy in which the main character commits blood sacrifices. And I’m squeamish. I never pretended to be coherent) My favorite Stross novels are still the Bob Howard/Laundry novels and short stories, especially some of the short stories (The Concrete Jungle is awesome fun).

And a French book, too, Shadow of the Prince by Tran-Nhut, a detective story featuring the recurring team of Mandarin Tân and his sidekicks Scholar Dinh and Doctor Pork. What can I say? I’m a sucker for historical mysteries, and this one was set in Ancient Vietnam! [1] (and written by a duo of Vietnamese-French sisters) Tân has to deal with a serial killer who may or may not be trying to topple the current dynasty, while facing some of the demons of his past–the dark deeds that led to the death of his school comrade, Prince Hung, more than twenty years ago… Chock-full of meaty details, of plot twists, and (more importantly) of good food. I’ve got the next volume, The Black Powder of Master Hou, which is set in Hạ Long Bay. Sounds nice.

In other news, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and go running, in an attempt to do some sport. I’m learning lots of things about our new neighbourhood–so far, I’m down to three Asian groceries (a mostly-Chinese one, a mostly-Vietnamese/SE Asian one, and a mostly-Japanese one. And there’s a Korean one a bit further down, too), one Russian takeaway (which has the H intrigued), one Picard (they specialise in frozen food), and one dry-cleaner (less interesting on an immediate basis, but very handy). Not only do I get some exercise, but I also discover new things!

[1] I’m a little puzzled as to when it’s set: the scenes that frame the narration tend to indicate that the story itself is set in the Lê dynasty, but the capital is referred to as “Thăng Long”, which is a name Hà Nội hasn’t had since the 11th Century (to be fair, every one in there is a scholar, so they possibly referred to it by its poetic name rather than by the prosaic name of “Đông Kinh”?) Later volumes make it clear that this is taking place in the mid-16th early-17th Century, right before the Trịnh–Nguyễn War, so definitely the Lê dynasty.

The latest issue of Locus contains Gardner Dozois’s review of “Scattered Along the River of Heaven”, which he very kindly calls the story one of the best of the year so far, and compares it to Ursula Le Guin’s “The Day Before the Revolution”. (in case you’re curious and not a Locus subscriber, Sean Wallace posted the full text of the review here)

Given that Le Guin is basically one of my heroines, who got me into feminism, and got me into SF at a time when most (hard) SF left me cold; and that “The Day Before the Revolution” is one of her stories that still stick with me, years after reading it… you’ll understand why I’m pretty much floored at that point.

(bonus links: Adam Callaway’s take on the Nebula Awards finalists, aka I’m floored again; and just for a contrast, VarietySF’s take, which basically lists “Shipbirth” at the bottom of the list as completely incomprehensible and unreadable)

The VN pictures are coming, promise, but they’re at home on the H’s computer and I need to get them first. Meanwhile, you get writing progress, aka the start of the serious research on Jade in Chains, aka the fantasy in Paris about dynasties of magicians at war (title not great, but it’s a start). Mostly poking at the worldbuilding so far, to see how it’ll go. I got a handful of books on odd places in Paris and am planning some walks (that’s a radical departure–research that can be done by taking the metro, wow :p ).

In other news, I can announce I’ll be one of the Guests of Honour at Finncon in 2013 in Helsinki, July 5-7th (the other confirmed GOH are famous Finnish author J. Pekka Mäkelä and PhD student Stefan Ekman). If you’ve always wanted an excuse to go to Finland in summer, now’s the time :=)

(last part. Apologies, this is the one where I complain a lot)

6. Guidebooks: I will not repeat the numerous curses I aimed at guidebooks over the course of the stay. We had two, the Lonely Planet and the Guide du Routard, and we mostly used them as bare indications of what to see (Grandma, in the fashion of long-time dwellers of cities, mostly directed us towards shops and restaurants rather than museums; plus Vietnamese can have very different ideas of tourism than Westerners). For all the rest, they sucked. I have never yet opened up a guidebook while knowing something about the country they described, and having now done it, I think I will never ever trust those %%%%ers again. The Lonely Planet thought it was smart to transcribe everything in the English UTF-8 alphabet (ie, no tonal marks, no accents, no additional letters such as “đ”). OK, here’s a hint: with that system, “dao” can mean anything from peach (đào) to religion (đạo) to knife (dao). And when you’re in a taxi trying to convince the guy that you want to go to the Museum of Vietnamese History (a destination, alas, not often used by tourists, which meant the taxi didn’t recognise it), that you don’t know how to say museum or history from memory and you’re pointing to a name and an address, neither of them properly written down, and the driver looks blank… %%%% is all I’m going to say. Also: next time, I will write down the name of the place in proper Vietnamese.
Le Guide du Routard, meanwhile, was a monument of colonialist fail. And I don’t use the word lightly. It repeatedly insisted on using the “old” names of bridges and streets over their new names (all the bridges and streets were named after French luminaries, a naming system which, as you can imagine, didn’t last long past independence) [1]. It warned people away from places like the Museum of War Remnants on the pretext that the coverage was spurious and fake, and that it would “make you hate the war”. Well, duh. The war isn’t fun, isn’t nice, isn’t something you can be thrilled around and buy souvenir T-shirts of, for God’s sake. People died. People starved. People did horrible things on both sides. And yes, the coverage of the Museum is a bit one-sided, focusing on the war crimes of the US and the French rather than on the other side. But if you think it’s not an important thing to see in the context of the war [2], then there is something seriously wrong with you.
(and I won’t even get into all the odd stuff they both said about Vietnamese culture–I’m not an expert, but even I could see that some things were completely off, and other things were hopeless generalisations of something specific to a particular region)

7. Dubious standards of beauty: the H and I remain deeply horrified by the ads we saw, which all featured varieties of Western models, or Vietnamese models touched up to have clearer skin. It was like some kind of freak show: it’s obvious that no one there is ever going to have that complexion, but it’s still the norm of beauty. I don’t know to what extent it’s White domination playing out, and to what extent it’s something that was already there and accentuated by the West (Mom and Grandma have always told me that clearer skin has been valued in Vietnam since ancient times, because having white skin showed that you weren’t a sun-tanned peasant), but the way it plays out today is… scary. Equally scary is leafing through beauty magazines, which advertise whitening cream with the same fervour we advertise anti-wrinkle cream in France. It reminds me of a picture on Requires_hate‘s blog. You’re shown a mall in Thailand, but it’s so generic it could be anywhere in the West: the brands and the models are all European and/or White (and/or blonde or brunette), and everything is labelled in English. And, in the midst of this, a crowd of Thai shoppers. They’re petite and swarthy, and nothing like those pallid, vapid stretched-out stick insects, and they will never ever be beautiful on those terms. Yup. Scary scary.
That’s all I had. Next: pictures, and I’ll stop complaining, promise.

[1] I’ll grant them one charitable intent, which is that they might be aiming this at French people who were in Indochina while it was still a colony. However, you have to realise that Vietnam became nominally independent from France in 1954, and that I don’t know when the renaming of stuff took place (offhand, juding from my bare-bones knowledge of history, I’d say post-1954 in the North, post-1975 in the South). Either way, we’re talking about names that have been unused for more than 30 years, if not more–and it’s the least of courtesies to call things by the name the country has given them.
[2] I am personally deeply uninterested in visiting places like these, but that’s another problem.

I’m going much better now: the fingers are mostly not swollen anymore, and all I have left are biggish bruises on the fingertips (which make typing all but impossible, but at least I can flex my fingers).

The flipside of hurting my hand goes as follow:
-Basic language test: I basically switched to English the entire time the H and I were dealing with the (minor) emergency, and only switched back to French once my hand was safely bandaged. So, apparently, when in pain, I switch to English. Go figure…

-Basic rice cooking test: since I could only use the left hand, the H ended up cooking rice–an activity that, by unspoken agreement, is left to me along with Vietnamese cooking. And boy, is it hard to convince him to follow directions properly :=D (he was OK with most of it, but didn’t want to rinse the rice more than once or twice before cooking. I insisted. Being a man who likes his sticky rice, he also put a lot more into the mixture we cook [1]). So now the H knows how to cook rice, or more accurately which buttons to press on the rice cooker 😀

That’s all from me. As mentioned above, still not very easy to type more than a few paras. I’ll save my energy for working on a crit.

[1]I cook 9/10 normal jasmine rice, 1/10 sticky–makes for a much nicer texture.

Mostly catching up on post-VN stuff…

-The cover of the omnibus edition of Obsidian and Blood has now been released: remember the uber-cool Larry Rostant cover that graced the French edition? Well, now it can be in your living room, with the complete Acatl novels. We’re currently discussing what will go in the omnibus beyond the text of the three novels, but I expect there’ll be bonus extras.

-My Nebula Awards interview (from last year) by John Ottinger III, is now up at the SFWA website–I talk about cooking, diversity in genre, and my fave bools with fabulous settings. Thanks to the tireless Charles Tan for organising everything, and to John for the perceptive questions.

-I will be Guest of Honour at the British Science Fiction Foundation/British Science Fiction Association AGM/mini-convention, on June 9th in London, at the Royal Astronomical Society. The other GOH is astronomer Marek Kukula. I’m also likely to hang around in London for the weekend (basically, I want to avoid getting up early and returning late, so I’m looking into being there Sunday as well). More details as I have them.

(PS: as some of you on FB and Twitter know, I jammed my right hand in a steel-reinforced door. I’m currently typing with my left hand and an index finger, so I’m not exactly fast on my feet at the moment. It’s much better than it was Tuesday night though, and I don’t think anything is broken. But apologies if I owe you long mails or edits, I can’t handle those well at the moment)

(part 2 of 3)

4. Language: so, we have established one thing, which will come as no surprise, which is that my Vietnamese pronunciation sucks, and the more towards the centre we moved, the less I could make myself understood. I could sort of fake it in Hội An (to the point that when I asked for the bill it was presented to me in Vietnamese, cueing a “er, how much is ba mươi hai in English/French/convenient other language” [1]), but Huế was markedly worse. Thank God, we didn’t go any further North… Also, I can’t really understand people (I catch words here and there, mainly from context and especially in the South), but that’s about it. But I have a dictionary now–and a book of Vietnamese fairytales! (don’t laugh. I figured that. a. vocabulary was going to be simple. b. I knew a lot of them and could hook up the wagons as I was reading c. they’re illustrated, which helps immensely).

5. Food, language and East meets West: we have also been able to indulge in an experiment in restaurants, which is the difference in treatment when you order in Vietnamese. Basically, whenever we did that, we got chopsticks and bowls, as if it speaking the language automatically meant you could deal with the eating habits (yes, I know. I actually could deal with the eating habits since childhood, long before I could mumble any word of the language, but it was nice not having to ask). The H watched the other (Western) tourists eat for a while, and said, “you know, when you look at them from the point of view of someone who’s always eaten Asian-style… not only do they seem very greedy by not sharing the contents of their plates, but they’re also eating from the serving dishes”. I had to fight very hard at that point not to spit the entire content of my mouth while laughing…

[1] Thirty-two thousand dong, in case you’re wondering (well, literally thirty-two, but no one bothers with the thousand anymore).

(broken down in several posts as this grew too long)

1. Food: oh my God, the food. I might be a tourist and more than a little lost in Vietnam, but the food is always like coming home (and it’s no coincidence that the one place I’m never lost in is restaurants). Plus, you always eat well at Grandma’s house (thanks to the combined efforts of Grandma, my maternal aunt, and my cousin). We also tested and patented the food crawl as we were travelling: this is a technique by which you get up at 6:00, have a cup of tea, eat a breakfast soup at 9:00, have lunch at 11:00, then have a boat ride on the Mekong and have a copious snack at 15:00, and proceed to dinner at 17:00 (all the while being pointed to food in various peremptory ways, and being told to eat in either French or Vietnamese). That’s discounting special events where you are well and properly stuffed, banquet-style (our stay intersected my great-grandmother’s death anniversary, and a two-year death anniversary for my great-uncle, which is basically when the period of mourning ends for the descendants); and it explains why we came back from Vietnam sated, but determined to undergo a diet of salads. [1]

2. Orientation: Grandma very sensibly wrote the address of the house on a bit of paper (well, OK. First she told me to repeat it out loud, then she grimaced and said she was going to give me a bit of paper… Remember what I said about my pronunciation sucking?), and that was what we gave taxis as we zoomed around Saigon. It puzzled them no end that two very obvious tourists (one White guy, and one vaguely Vietnamese-looking gal who obviously couldn’t speak very well) would ask to be dropped in what seemed to them the back end of nowhere. Mostly it was fine, but we did have one taxi driver who kept circling the house, looking for a hotel where we could be staying… (when this was explained to Grandma, she laughed very hard and said she was the cheap variety of hotel). In the end, I gave up the pronunciation game–it’s just too frustrating to argue with a cab while the meter is running–and copied down street names on a bit of paper. (I think the only two places that I said out loud that didn’t suffer from a pronunciation problem were the Bến Thành market, which is a touristy destination, and the word “crossroads”, but it was accompanied by a list of two street names, and a rather graphic gesture of a cross made with my hands).

3. Tourists vs. locals: the H and I spent a most profitable afternoon in Hội An [2] observing an ever-increasing flow of local tourists vs Westerners, and we’ve come to the conclusion that the one difference between the “locals” and the Westerners is–guess who’s wearing the T-shirts and shorts and getting sunburnt? (getting dark skin is considered a bad thing in Vietnam, so a lot of people dress with long-sleeved shirts, trousers, and sometimes even gloves and facemasks. And I shudder for the poor kids decked out in thick winter clothes, because it’s colder in the Centre, but most certainly not *that* cold).

[1] I didn’t escape the ritual bout of food poisoning in Hội An–two days out, and I basically couldn’t keep anything down. Thankfully it didn’t last long, because it was a bit stressful to be rushing about in a temple complex trying to explain with gestures that I was going to be sick and needed to get away from the sanctuaries before it got messy. Also, explaining in a restaurant that I was sick and needed cháo (rice porridge) was worth a laugh or two (I mangled the pronunciation completely, but enough of it got across that I basically got a custom dish made up for me).
[2] Incidentally, if anyone knows of a festival that happens to fall on Feb 8th/the 17th day of the First Lunar Month, we’d be interested. We were mildly curious at the queue of pilgrims outside the Quan Vũ/Guan Yu temple in Hội An, and we couldn’t figure out why they’d be there (I know Guan Yu’s death anniversary is on the 13th day of the First Lunar month or something, but the date doesn’t coincide).

Er, so, I would seem to be on the Nebula final ballot (along with a great many fabulous people–special shoutout to Nancy Fulda, Tom Crosshill, and Ken Liu, whose main occupation seems to be taking over awards lists. Also, bonus mention to Dario Ciriello, editor and publisher of Panverse Volume Three, who edited and published Ken Liu’s awesome nominated novella).

Sadly, I won’t be able to attend the Nebula Awards Weekend (I would so totally have gone, especially since I have yet to meet so many of the people on that list; but a close friend of mine is getting married the same weekend). Many many congrats to my fellow nominees, and my most profound thanks to everyone who voted in the nominating process (especially those who voted for me–goes without saying–but it’s the number of voters who make awards, and I’m glad we’ve been having more and more online discussions of worthy stories and novels. Only makes the awards stronger). And many thanks as well to everyone who recommended stuff to me–reading stuff this year has been cumbersome because of RL, but so totally worth it.

Below is the complete listing. Meanwhile, I’ll be over there in the corner, comatose (partly from shock, partly from sheer jetlag, my body being utterly convinced it’s still in Vietnam and therefore that it should be in bed). More later.

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is proud to announce the nominees for the 2011 Nebula Awards (presented 2012), the nominees for the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and the nominees for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

Novel

• Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
• Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
• Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
• God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
• Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
• The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

Novella

• “Kiss Me Twice,” Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2011)
• “Silently and Very Fast,” Catherynne M. Valente (WFSA Press; Clarkesworld Magazine, October 2011)
• “The Ice Owl,” Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December 2011)
• “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2011)
• “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary,” Ken Liu (Panverse Three, Panverse Publishing)
• “With Unclean Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2011)

Novelette

• “Fields of Gold,” Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse 4, Night Shade Books)
• “Ray of Light,” Brad R. Torgersen (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2011)
• “Sauerkraut Station,” Ferrett Steinmetz (Giganotosaurus, November 2011)
• “Six Months, Three Days,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com, June 2011)
• “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers,” Katherine Sparrow (Giganotosaurus, July 2011)
• “The Old Equations,” Jake Kerr (Lightspeed Magazine, July 2011)
• “What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September/October 2011)

Short Story

• “Her Husband’s Hands,” Adam-Troy Castro (Lightspeed Magazine, October 2011)
• “Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son,” Tom Crosshill (Lightspeed Magazine, April 2011)
• “Movement,” Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2011)
• “Shipbirth,” Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s Science Fiction, February 2011)
• “The Axiom of Choice,” David W. Goldman (New Haven Review, Winter 2011)
• “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2011)
• “The Paper Menagerie,” Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2011)

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

• Attack the Block, Joe Cornish (writer/director) (Optimum Releasing; Screen Gems)
• Captain America: The First Avenger, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely (writers), Joe Johnston (director) (Paramount)
• Doctor Who: “The Doctor’s Wife,” Neil Gaiman (writer), Richard Clark (director) (BBC Wales)
• Hugo, John Logan (writer), Martin Scorsese (director) (Paramount)
• Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen (writer/director) (Sony)
• Source Code, Ben Ripley (writer), Duncan Jones (director) (Summit)
• The Adjustment Bureau, George Nolfi (writer/director) (Universal)

Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book

• Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor (Viking Juvenile)
• Chime, Franny Billingsley (Dial Books; Bloomsbury)
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hodder & Stoughton)
• Everybody Sees the Ants, A.S. King (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• The Boy at the End of the World, Greg van Eekhout (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
• The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (Big Mouth House)
• The Girl of Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson (Greenwillow Books)
• Ultraviolet, R.J. Anderson (Orchard Books; Carolrhoda Books)

The winners will be announced at SFWA’s 47^th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend, to be held Thursday through Sunday, May 17 to May 20, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, near Reagan National Airport. As announced earlier this year, Connie Willis will be the recipient of the 2011 Damon Knight Grand Master Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements in the field. Walter Jon Williams will preside as toastmaster, with Astronaut Michael Fincke as keynote speaker.

The Nebula Awards are voted on, and presented by, active members of SFWA. Voting will open to SFWA Active members on March 1 and close on March 30. More information on voting is available here.

Founded in 1965 by the late Damon Knight, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America brings together the most successful and daring writers of speculative fiction throughout the world.

Since its inception, SFWA® has grown in numbers and influence until it is now widely recognized as one of the most effective non-profit writers’ organizations in existence, boasting a membership of approximately 2,000 science fiction and fantasy writers as well as artists, editors and allied professionals. Each year the organization presents the prestigious Nebula Awards® for the year’s best literary and dramatic works of speculative fiction.

Very short post before I go to bed take a shower and catch up on very very overdue email.

It was awesome. We crawled our way through scrumptious food, hung around with relatives, and I got to show off some (very limited) Vietnamese skills; and we visited Huế, which is so totally worth the trip! The H looks fine (I was worried he’d be a little frightened off by all the strange stuff); and he liked the trip I also have a few gripes about clueless guidebooks and clueless tourists, but I’ll get to those when I’m fully rested.

We’re also the proud owners of: 1kg of chả lụa, 2 grapefuits, and four green mangoes, one Vietnamese-English/English-Vietnamese dictionary, one cookbook (this one, chosen at random off the shelves, and which is an encyclopedia of dishes from A to X [1]), and one book of fairytales (this one, which had the merit of having tales I could recognise, and illustrations, always a handy thing for linguistically-challenged people like me). And a couple other things like 15 chopsticks rests with a lotus shape–from this shop, which basically had me go “oh…” all the while we were in there–their designs are a smart cross of East meets West (with a purely Vietnamese aesthetic): they have both a Western-style table ie plates and forks, and an Eastern style one ie rice bowls and porcelain spoons, and all of it is so pretty! Moments like those, I wish we didn’t already have a complete set of plates and rice bowls at home… But alas, the cupboards are bulging with stuff, so we stuck to the chopsticks rests, which should be put to the double use of chopsticks rest and knife rests, depending on what the meal’s like…

[1] Vietnamese has no Z, and very few words that start with Y.