Since it’s gone public on the website, here’s my Eastercon schedule as it looks now:

Saturday, 12 noon, Main: “Non Western SF and Fantasy”

Anglophone writers and books by westerners still dominate the bookshelves, but Japan, China and India (to take three examples) also have thriving sff traditions. The panel look at the trends outside the Anglophone and western worlds. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz moderates Aliette de Bodard, Stephane Marsan, Sarah Newton and Gillian Redfearn.

Saturday, 17:00, Rowan, “Motherhood in SF and Fantasy”

Where are the mothers in our depictions of future societies and fantasy worlds? Very often absent or ignored. Our panel looks at the depictions of motherhood and asks what more we can do. Terry Jackman moderates Aliette de Bodard, Chris Beckett, Mike Cobley and Rochita Loenen-Ruiz.

Saturday, 19:00, Conservatory, “Get-Together”

Meet authors and get books signed

Sunday, 11:00, Rowan, “Why is the Future Drawn so White?”

When the protagonist of Justine Larbalastier’s Liar was whitewashed in the cover art, both the author and the internet were outraged and the cover was eventually changed. Yet characters of colour are still all too often absent or elided. How can we work to challenge this and why does it happen? Caroline Hooton moderates Dev Agarwal, Aliette de Bodard, CE Murphy, Tajinder Singh Hayer and Stephanie Saulter.

Sunday, 13:00, Boardroom, “Advice for Writers: Setting”

Practical experience and observations on writing believable and detailed environments. Darren Nash moderates Chris Beckett, Aliette de Bodard, Simon Morden and Gaie Sebold.

Sunday, 19:00, Main, “BSFA Awards/Loncon 3 update”

Award Administrator Donna Scott and Master of Ceremonies Paul Cornell, assisted by our Guests of Honour, present the BSFA Awards for 2012. They then hand over to the LonCon 3 team for a presentation and update on next year’s UK Worldcon. (I’ll be presenting the James White Award at the beginning of the ceremony)

Over at the Kirkus  blog, Ana and Thea from the Book Smugglers kindly review On a Red Station, Drifting. Aka wow.

This is an extremely political story in every sense of the word: on a macro scale of fighting for one’s beliefs in impossible situations and within the microcosm of the domestic, the individual—this dichotomy not really a dichotomy at all, as the micro and macro often intertwine in an inextricable tangle.

This is a beautifully realized story and the characters, plot, theme and writing are expertly crafted. My one regret is that I did not read it before we sent out our Hugo Award Nominations.

So… still well, still overwhelmed.

Progress was made on the novel (I have about half a plot instead of 2% of it); and words were produced. Will now resume watching The Killing (original Danish version) which has us quite unexpectedly enthralled. Have to admit I didn’t see how they could keep the plot going for over 10 episodes, but so far they seem to be doing swimmingly well at it. Part of the reason, I guess (and part of the reason why it feels so lived-in) is that the storyline takes the time to go over the various characters involved (the parents especially) and to show us the family struggling with grief and dark secrets and truths that repeatedly destroy them, which makes them feel all the more realistic, and is fertile ground for the writers to extend storylines by showing us the cost of crimes  (it’s also interesting to see that the investigation’s attempt to keep the family in the loop end up causing more harm than good). My sis wants to watch The Bridge next; I might steal her DVDs…

Next week I shall be at Eastercon, where I have a nice program shaping up (and will hand out the James White Award as representative of the jury, my first ever award presentation–kind of hoping my nerves won’t show too much 😉 )

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.

–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.

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[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).