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While we were reading

SCKA 2022 - We're back!

16/2/2022

 
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The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards are back, and I'm back as a juror too after a year of hiatus.
Our nomination list is in and we have so many good stories on it!

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What is progressive short SF?

22/11/2021

 
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The Future Fire is an online magazine I love reading because the short fiction in it is always of the best quality and often avoids the beaten track.

The editors, Valeria Vitale and Djibril Al-Ayad, currently have an open submission for an anthology and special issue whose theme is Noir progressive SF.

In this guest blog post, they explain what progressive short SF is to them, and the challenges of finding and writing Noir progressive SF. Because, after all and despite appearances, Noir is so very conservative, isn't it?
So, if you want to know more about this forthcoming issue, read on what Valeria and Djibril have to say!

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A few subjective thoughts about WorldCon

31/8/2020

 



When the Sad Puppies affair happened, it should have rung two alarm bells, not just one. Don't get me wrong, it was good to see people galvanised by the realisation that scifi and fantasy were full of racists, sexists, homophobes and transphobes. A lot of us had been telling that for a long time, even experienced it painfully. The alarm bell came late. Very late. But it came and that was good because from that emerged a realisation that things were wrong. Please note I'm saying realisation and not necessarily action…

The second alarm bell didn't happen. The second alarm bell should have been: "What the ef is wrong with an organisation whose awards can be manipulated in such a way?" A few voices though raised the issue. As for the racism, sexism, etc. in times not-so-long past (or present), no one really listened, or people said, "But look! It's robust! We've tweaked the rules and avoided the worst!" That, in itself, should have been a worry: preserving the institution was more important than attacking the root of the problems, its own organisation.

Fast forward 2020 and the Saudi Arabia bid. All of a sudden, everyone realises that there is a problem. Well, yes, there effing is. I won't get into why the idea of hosting a con in Saudi Arabia is a bad idea because, honestly, if you can't understand it or if you find excuses to it, you should stop reading right now.

But the fact is that we have now people asking: "How did that happen?" Well, in the same way that the Sad Puppies happened. The only thing you need to vote in the Hugos or the bids is money.
Basically, WorldCon and the Hugos is an oligarchy.


Let's face it, WorldCon was in its inception as much "world" as the US baseball championship is "World" series. But the thing is, if it's written on the door long enough, people end up believing it. And while an old guard is still wondering what happened to PDFs fanzines, a lot of new, diverse, creators and readers who passed the threshold are saying that there's something rotten in here.
But who has the money and the time to decide on what happens and on how the organisation changes (or not)? Again, the oligarchy.
And one of the things that leaves me bemused is how all those people say that they are not a hierarchical organisation, not top-down, that they're anarchists really. They are absolutely blind to the fact that they may not be hierarchical inside the circle but to actually reach the circle, you already have to belong to the top, or at least the upper-middle of the social hierarchy because, let's remind it again, time and money. And no, that doesn't bloody make you an anarchist at all. Please check the definition because when you say that you look perfectly ridiculous to anyone who knows what anarchy is.


At the same time, the magnificent effort pulled by a team of dedicated fans and creators to bring CoNZealand Fringe into existence proved that something else is possible. Something relevant, international, and diverse. I think that, nonetheless, the Fringe has one limit. Through the quarantine, a lot of us have learned that online is fine, but with meatspace also comes a different kind of relationships, very valuable, whether it is a quiet smoke outside when you meet writers or others fans, getting into a passionate discussion with strangers around a drink, deciding to wander into the streets in a city you don't know with your mates…
All things that won't be possible in Saudi Arabia if you're LGBTQ+ or a woman alone. But it's fine, it's fine. The good people with all the money and time on their hands will save us with their enlightened voting. Amazing how reminiscent that is to me of some regimes during the Antiquity or the Third Republic in France (spoiler: there was an actual anarchist revolution in the middle of that, La Commune).

After the absolute clusterfork that the ceremony was, I saw some people realising that less than 2000 people vote in the Hugos. Less than 2000 people for the SFF awards that is the most recognised around the world.  It is in the favour of wonderful, talented and hard working creators right now, and I am delighted with the results. But it also means that a) the Hugos are not representative of the community at large and b) what happens when the people, whose only qualification is to have money, decide that all this "diversity thing is fine but let's go back to some proper serious mediocre white men"? Because it'll happen. Conservatism always pushes bach and with less than 2000 voters, the Hugos are easy to hijack if you have the money for it and an agenda less transparent than the Puppies'.


Where's the future? Is it in waiting for an organisation that changes so slowly that it makes the Jurassic look positively modern to finally catch up? Is it in going fully online and finally getting us rid of the money constraints that exclude so many fans year after year? Is it in building something new, both online and in meatspace, leaving the old to those who faithfully guard it with their rituals and ceremonies?

As far as I'm concerned, I'm always fond of saying: burn it to the ground!

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The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2020 - The shortlist!

26/7/2020

 
It hasn't been easy to reach the shortlist. Our reading availability has been compromised by... Well, you know. No need to draw you a diagram. You're in it too, wherever you are in the world.
Despite everything, the debates have been as passionate as every year, we had to let go of books we loved. It was hard but we end up with a very interesting short list, which, we hope, reflects well what we consider to be the best of 2019.
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The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2020 - Voting, first round

14/7/2020

 
Slowly, we've reached the stage of voting in the first round.
This year has been difficult for us all as we didn't have much head space for reading. Also, since we won't meet together at a con for giving the results, there was less of a sense of urgency.
So, here we are, later than usual, but still reading and kicking.
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I haven't put in my votes yet, but I thought I'd do a quick recap, like Hammard did, about what I read and liked.
Sadly, I've had to pull out of three categories this year for the first round (fantasy, blurred boundaries and short stories) but I fully intend to get back to at least two of those for the second round, particularly since the fantasy category seems to be very exciting.

Science-Fiction category: this will be the hardest. There are three novels I want to give my vote to. Three novels I absolutely want in the second round. The Outside by Ada Hoffmann, which blew me away last year and has perfect neurodiverse rep; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, which has an extraordinary pace, excellent world building and a remarkable rep of colonialism; All City by Alex DiFrancesco, which also blew me away and was the topical novel I didn't know I wanted to read. But I can only nominate two (first one gets two points, second one gets one point). This is going to hurt so much.

Novella category: A lot of contenders here for me, and some novellas which are definitely not my own cup of tea but very much to the liking of my fellow jurors! One of the most interesting things with SCKA is also how debating about the books with others can have you digging deeper into things you had initally dismissed, to realise that there was more to it than you first thought, or how some aspects you weren't keen on were balanced by things that made the novella worthwhile. My own highlights include Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Incompleteness Theories by Wole Talabi; The Deep by Rivers Solomon.

Series category: One of the things I particularly appreciate with SCKA is how it makes us read books we wouldn't read otherwise. In the series category, I really enjoyed reading the Sword and Fire trilogy by Melissa Caruso which was gathering dust on my TBR. Sometimes also, it just confirms that, nope, this book isn't your cup of tea at all! Apart from Caruso's series, my others highlights include, without a surprise if you follow this blog, Rosewater by Tade Thompson, and The Winnowing Flame by Jen Williams.

The deadline for putting our votes in is 19 July 2020. So stay tuned... The results are coming in shortly. Who will make it to the second round? (Dun, dun, dun...)

The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2020 - The Nominations

2/2/2020

 
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The first step in the SCKA is nominating the stories. Each juror can nominate one story in each category. If two jurors want to nominate the same story, then it's best to have a back-up.
It can also lead to a lot of negotiating and bribing, but also hair pulling including the scream: "Nooooo! Why did you nominate that?"
Afterwards, Hammard checks the eligibility and we are ready to go!
With more jurors on board this year, it means more stories.
We'll have some work to do to finish them all before the deadline!

And our nominees are...

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The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2020 - We're back!

12/1/2020

 
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The adventure started in 2017 and we've enjoyed it so much that we're back again!

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The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards 2019 - The Results!

24/8/2019

 
Books were read and discussed.
Pebbles were stolen from the beach and painted.

Winners were proclaimed!
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SCKA 2019 - The finalists

13/7/2019

 
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We have read.
We have politely disagreed.
We have discussed some more.
There's been some chaos.

We have finalists!

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International Women Day 2019

9/3/2019

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Art by Lili-May, available on Red Bubble.
Yesterday was International Women Day.
On my Twitter account, I regularly play "one like = one recommendation", so it was the perfect day to do one like = one recommendation of a woman writing SFF.
In the end, the list was 101 names strong.
They are all gathered here, in no particular order.

I have reviewed a fair number of the books mentioned here. You can find them in the index.

I hope you'll find some great writers you'll enjoy reading!

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SCKA 2019 - The nominations

20/1/2019

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Back in 2018, we had a crazy idea: some Kind of Awards, with some readers and/or book bloggers as jurors, determining Subjectively and in a merry Chaos what we had liked.

Having had tremendous fun doing it, we had to do it again in 2019.
Our nominations are in, so click read more to see which SFF stories made it to the first round!

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What I did on my holiday - Torino (Italy)

14/8/2018

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Earlier this year, I went to Torino (Italy), a brilliant city I recommend visiting.

But, unbeknownst to my friends who didn't know what they were in for, I found out that there was a scifi and fantasy bookshop there.
Ensued C. being lost in it, while said friends escaped, disgusted, because they were tired of waiting.

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SCKA - The winners (part 3)

12/8/2018

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It started in January as a mad idea.
But we made it through.
We read a lot, we debated a lot, we voted for a first round and got our very worthy finalists. Then we debated some more and we voted for the second round.
After 8 months, the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards have chosen the winners!
We announced them at Nine Worlds, on Saturday 11 August 2018. And, as Imyril said, it was a bit chaotic, because, obviously, it had to be!

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The 2018 Clarke Award honours an acephobic/arophobic novel

18/7/2018

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I have been a faithful follower of the Clarke Award for years. Some shortlisted books and winners I have loved (and even reviewed on this blog), others I didn't like. But hey! That happens. No novel is universally loved.
This year though, I have felt underwhelmed by the shortlist. This was before I reached Dreams before the Start of Time by Anne Charnock. And that's when everything went wrong for me.
And then it got worse, because it went on winning the award.

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SCKA - The voting (part 2)

7/7/2018

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Early in January, a group of readers assembled, heroes ready to tackle an extra to-be-read pile, and not a small one too!
We are now in July, the pile is done and dusted and the voting is now happening.

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An afternoon in Cannes chatting about Afrofuturism

18/5/2018

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I live about 30 kilometres from Cannes. So when I realised that Sheree Renée Thomas, writer and editor of the Dark Matter anthology (among others) would be there to talk about Afrofuturism, I had to be there. She very graciously added me to the guest list so I could attend the panels and, very excited about the prospect, there I went.

Please note that all errors in quotes or any misattribution of a quote would be entirely mine. Feel free to drop me a line if I did a mistake.

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SCKA - The readings (part 1)

3/2/2018

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What? You've missed what the The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards are?
Well, it's a totally hype (seven pretty obscure readers and bookbloggers), very glamourous (mostly reading in their PJs at home), completely professional (making it up as they go along) new SFF award (we will hand out paintd pebbles to the winners if we meet them). Oh, also, there'll be drinking, as Bethan says. (For more information, please, check here.)
Anyway, here's a first update on what's happening in the offing.

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Announcing the 2018 Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards!

16/1/2018

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Ladies, gentlemen and non binary+ or intersex+ persons,
Let me introduce to you the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards!
*fanfare* *rolling drums* *firecrackers* *confettis*
Well, actually... it's just a bit of fun that a group of scifi and fantasy readers, including me, have decided to indulge into by looking at the 2017 published scifi and fantasy stories and trying to pick up our favourite.
Now let me tell you more.

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A look at the year past, a look at the future year

30/12/2017

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With 2017 drawing to a close, it's time to look back on the blog in 2017.

In 2017, I had set myself a couple of goals, and both were achieved, I'm proud to say:
  1. That at least a third of the reviews would be about books written by PoC writers. That goal was actually quite easy to achieve, even if I've sometimes had to search for books published more than three years ago. To say it was easy to achieve doesn't mean at all that there is a plethora of books written by PoC and traditionnally published out there. No, there isn't. But it was a pleasure to get out of my comfort zone, one name led to another, and anyway, when you publish only about 30 reviews per year, it isn't that hard to find about a dozen written by PoC writers.
  2. That I would get some decent statistics. Well, the built-in statistics system and the Google statistics don't agree at all about how many people visit the blog (one is over-enthusiastic, the other don't even register me when I'm on it - but it's on purpose, I'm paranoid), but I have what I estimate to be sufficient statistics to keep me blogging and not feeling I natter on alone in the dark!

One of my initial goals was also to review two books a month. I suddenly changed gears barely a few weeks into 2017 by publishing three reviews a month. It seems to me like a good balance between my free time to write reviews and what a (very!) hypothetical reader faithfully following my recommendations would read within a month.

I'm pretty happy about all the books I've reviewed. Looking back, yes, there are one or two that I wonder why I actually ended up reviewing them because a few months later I can say that I'm not as enthusiastic about them as I was when reading them. But for the vast majority, I stand by every single word I wrote.
I'm also quite happy about the variety and diversity I've achieved through the reviews.
You can check below the complete publication schedule with the details, including gender, race, nationality of writers ; genres ; small press / big press ; gender of the characters, etc. So if you enjoy doing statistics, be my guest! I'm pretty proud that I covered writers from almost every continent. I was also quite surprised - not - when I realised that most of the female main characters in the books I read were written by female writers.
Please note: the disparity between male and female writers is because I reviewed an uneven number of novels. But parity remains when you look at the reviews since the opening of the blog and will continue in 2018 when the first novel reviewed will be written by a female writer.
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What about 2018?
  1. As always, I'll follow a strict alternance between reviews by books written by a woman and books written by a man.
  2. I'll keep on reviewing PoC writers and they will represent again at least a third of the yearly total.
  3. I want to go back to oldies, so I'll review 6 or 5 books published before I was born or the year I was born. I had to choose a date and 1978 felt as good as any date. And now, it's old, anyway!
  4. I'll keep on reviewing three books a month and still selecting those I preferred.
  5. As it was the case in 2017, only five books or less will be review copies or arcs.
  6. Jeannette Ng very kindly agreed to do a spoiler interview with me (here) and I thought it was very interesting, especially considering a lot of people read books reviews after having read the book. I'd like to do more of those with writers whose book have left my mind reeling. But as it doesn't really depend on me, we'll have to see.

I still won't apply any quota to QUILTBAG writers as it proves tricky since not all writers announce to the world if they are QUILTBAG and I certainly won't go to pester them to know about it.

I hope you enjoyed the reviews in 2017 and that you will enjoy those to come in 2018. Thanks to every single one of you reading and following the blog and spreading the word about it!
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C.'s eleven favourite scifi & fantasy stories read in 2017

22/12/2017

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When I was reviewing only one book a month, it was quite easy to see which were my eleven favourite scifi and fantasy stories of the year (the single collection made twelve). Since I've considerably increased the number of reviews per month in 2017, it may not be as visible. On the other hand, I've reviewed more books because I've read great stories and that one review a month wasn't enough anymore.
So, let's now pick la crème de la crème from my 2017 reads! Here are the books that you really must catch up if you haven't read them.
Please note these aren't necessarily books published in 2017. The books are in the order I read them.

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Would an #ownvoices novel avoid any misunderstanding?

5/11/2017

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Here I am, reading a scifi novel. Let's call it The Graffiti Artist by Joseph Franzen. In The Graffiti Artist, there's a matriarchal society established on another planet. I felt at first ill at ease. At page 60, I'm now cringing. I don't think I'm going to read much more than another 40 pages.
But the thing is, if on the cover it said The Graffiti Artist is written by Josephina Franzen rather than Joseph Franzen, I'd have been willing to give it a much more extended chance.
So my question is: would an own voices novel avoid any misunderstanding regarding what the writer tries to convey?
SPOILER WARNING FOR: The Power, by Naomi Alderman; In the Mother's Land, by Élisabeth Vonarburg.

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The essential scifi & fantasy books since 1960 - A collaborative list

14/8/2017

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So you know how it is: you want to do The Ultimate Reading List, the one packed with all the essentials that people Need To Read (note the caps to emphasize intent). And then you delete the draft over and over again because you can't do it, there's always something more that you need to add or that you forget, and in the end it's some kind of Moby Dick: huge, bloated, unkillable and always tantalising you.
But what if you asked people to give you a hand rather than going all Achab?
So, inspired by Hammard's list on Twitter, I set out to ask my Twitter followers help in drawing up The Ultimate Reading List, the one with the essential scifi and fantasy books since the 1960s, with ten books per decade.
And voilà!
The process, including all the nominations, the numbers, etc., is detailed at the end of the post.
The books are ordered within each decade by the number of votes they received.

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What I did on my holiday - Scifi tourism in Scotland

25/7/2017

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Edinburgh Castle, from the National Gallery.
Scotland... Home to R.L. Stevenson, Charlie Stross, Iain M. Banks, Laura Lam, Christopher Brookmyre, J. K. Rowling, Ken McLeod, Arthur Conan Doyle, and I'm missing a lot!
So, obviously, when I went to Scotland for a few days, it was also to geek out. And Leigh, being a proud Glaswegian, was the perfect guide so we geeked out in pair!

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Of female writers, PoC writers and quotas

27/5/2017

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Gareth Beniston (whose blog you can find here) wrote a very interesting blog post on the Shadow Clarke website about quotas (here).
While it addresses the issue in the context of an award, I wanted to address the issue in the context of a book blog, particularly one such as mine which has strict guidelines, a.k.a. quotas.

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The 2017 Arthur C. Clarke shortlist - A conversation between two SFF fans

13/5/2017

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Matt from Runalongtheshelves and I were eagerly waiting for the Clarke shortlist. Here it is and we started chatting about it.
(Please note that this is a conversation, as indicated by the word "Conversation" in the title of the post. For the reviews, you can head to the "Reviews" section of the site or follow the links.)

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    "While we were reading" is an irregular feature about reading science-fiction and fantasy. It can contain guest posts. Nothing fancy, come as you are.
    It is also home to all the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards announcements.
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