The Incomparable is a podcast hosted by Jason Snell that won the 2012 Parsec Award for best fan podcast. Episode #196, released today, features panelist Scott McNulty and special guest panelists Fred Kiesche, Paul Weimer, and Shaun Duke, discussing the eight novels nominated for this year’s Nebula Awards. Yes, that includes my own The Red: First Light. Interesting opinions from a set of panelists who read a lot of books…
A few weeks ago I got to do a Google Hangout with Patrick Hester and John Anealio of The Functional Nerds. (Love that name!)
That chat is now a podcast, available here. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. I have a suspicion I may have said a few silly things — but that’s the hazard of an unedited existence. 🙂
At any rate, it was a lot of fun. My thanks go out to Patrick and John — and I hope y’all will check it out.
I lived for my first nine or ten years in California, and for most of that time my dad and mom were into car camping — and so was I! We would take off for a weekend or a week to visit parks and forests in the deserts and mountains. I loved it. I don’t remember ever being unhappy when I heard we were going camping.
More than one of those visits was made to Yosemite National Park. This would have been in the 1960s. We moved to Hawaii around 1970, and I don’t think I ever visited the park again — that is, until now. This past week, after the Nebula awards, I made it back to the park for one glorious day. I was with my husband, who was seeing the park for the first time. The weather was perfect, and the crowds were not bad at all.
We started with a visit to Glacier Point, where we had a stunning, panoramic view. We also discovered there is a trail, just over four miles in length, that traverses the valley wall between Glacier Point and the valley floor. That is definitely on our list to do the next time we’re able to visit.
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…is now available.
Edited by Ellen Datlow, this anthology includes my short story “Halfway Home,” originally published at Nightmare Magazine.
Find it in print and ebook versions at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or an indie bookstore near you.
There are twenty-four stories altogether. The table of contents can be reviewed here at SF Signal.
More good news for The Red: First Light! The novel has been honored as a finalist for The John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This must have been a good year for science fiction, because there are fifteen finalists — more than in any other recent year.
The Campbell Memorial Award is a juried award presented for the best science-fiction novel of the year. It’s considered one of the three major annual awards for science fiction, and is generally limited to science fiction — in other words, it does not consider fantasy novels. The award is administered by Christopher McKitterick, Director of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.
The winner has not been announced yet, though no doubt it will be soon. Again, I have no expectation of winning, but as with the Nebulas, it truly is an honor just to be nominated.
This is actually my second Campbell nomination. My novel Memory was nominated back in 2004 — something I never knew at the time. It was only in the last year or so that I discovered it on the list of nominees — a rather ironic surprise.
I have now attended my first Nebula weekend, and I’m happy to report that it was a lot of fun. No, I didn’t win best novel, but then I didn’t expect to, so I wasn’t even nervous.
The winner of the novel category was announced last. As the time approached, I began to realize I would be in an awkward position if by some strange fluke I did win, because I had no acceptance speech prepared. Nothing. Nyet. Nada. Turned out not to be a problem, of course. 😛
Other activities included an interview and photo session, a panel on how science is changing science fiction, a SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) business meeting (also a first for me), lunch and bar time with other writers, and introducing my husband to those who had never met him.
I haven’t attended a gathering of SFF writers since the nineties. I don’t really do well in crowds, and I have an absolutely horrible memory for faces, but this gathering was small enough that all went well and I am encouraged. I’m sure there will be more conventions in my future.
I wanted to post a photo of the dress I wore to the banquet, but it turns out I don’t have a photo… alas. My husband probably does, but he’s not home right now, so that will have to wait.
This is an almost-last-minute post to say that I will be at the Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, well, THIS WEEKEND. Or more accurately, mostly on Friday and Saturday.
On Friday evening there will be a “mass signing” involving lots of writers, including me. I hope someone will bring a book or two for me to sign. Yes? Maybe?
I’m also doing a Saturday panel on the topic How might science change science fiction? That question seems almost deceptively easy, doesn’t it? The panel is at 3pm, so if you’re attending, please consider stopping in.
The awards banquet is Saturday evening. While The Red: First Light has been nominated for a Nebula award, I have no expectation of winning. (So the pressure is off!) I do have great hopes of having a good time though, at my first-ever Nebula Weekend.
NO WAY OUT BUT FORWARD
Back-cover copy:
Lieutenant James Shelley and his squad of US Army soldiers were on a quest for justice when they carried out the unauthorized mission known as First Light. They returned home to America to face a court-martial, determined to expose the corruption in the chain of command that compelled their actions. But in a country still reeling from the nuclear terrorism of Coma Day, the courtroom is only one battlefield. A new cycle of violence ignites when rumors of the elusive, rogue AI known as the Red go public—and Shelley is, once again, pulled into the fray.
Challenged by his enemies, driven by ideals, Shelley feels compelled to act—but are the harrowing choices he makes really his own, or are they made for him, by the Red? With millions of lives at stake in a game of nuclear cat-and-mouse, does it even matter?
Digital painting by Dallas Nagata White
Cover design by Emily Irwin
Dallas also did the cover painting for The Red: First Light.
Emily did the cover painting and cover design for Memory.
A number of Spanish blogs have been participating in a special project during the month of April devoted to women in science fiction and fantasy. It’s called “The Gender and the Genre” and I have the privilege of being part of it, through an interview conducted by Cristina Jurado, from the blog Más Ficción Que Ciencia, and writer and reviewer Elías Combarro (@odo on twitter) of Sense of Wonder.
Cristina and Elías composed the questions, and then Cristina translated my responses into Spanish.
You can find the English version of the interview here at Sense of Wonder.
And the Spanish version is here at Más Ficción Que Ciencia and mirrored here at El Fantascopio.
Also check out Elías’s review of The Bohr Maker (Spanish only).
I first heard of T.C. McCarthy through the War Stories anthology, and I just finished reading his novel Germline, winner of the 2012 Compton Crook award — a first-novel award presented annually by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.
In summary, Germline is the most absorbing SF novel I’ve read in some time.
As I get older, it’s harder for me to really connect with a novel, to be pulled in by it. So much of the time, reading feels like an intellectual exercise — but that wasn’t the case with Germline. I found this effect especially interesting because there were aspects of the novel I would have resisted, if they’d been handled with less skill.
Germline is military science fiction, but it’s not about glory or heroism or interstellar battles or even tough choices. It’s about the destructive hopelessness of war, even for the survivors, and reminds me a lot of stories set in World Wars I and II.
The story takes place on Earth in Kazakhstan. This is no brush war: the theater is large, and it’s an all-out slugfest, with no regard for civilians. It’s supposed to take place in the future, but to me it felt more like an alternate history, using some weapons still-to-be-invented. Also, there are a couple of plot points that didn’t add up for me — but there’s no such thing as a perfect book. Where this story really excels is in the characterization. There’s great depth in the protagonist, Oscar Wendell, as he interprets the effects of war on himself and the men around him. The story Oscar tells is grim, grim, grim, but it’s not without friendship, caring, and devotion.
The title, Germline, refers to genetically-engineered soldiers, who do exist in the book, though to me they were not what the book was about. So in retrospect, the title seems a little odd. But that’s a trivial point. If you haven’t read T.C. McCarthy’s Germline yet, grab a sample and check it out. You’ll know early on if this is a book for you.