Limyaael

10:05 pm: Book review post for April (part 1)
Haven’t done one of these in a long time, so I’ve got a lot of novels to cover; I’ll do another post sometime soon.

COMMENTS HAVE SPOILERS FOR DUST

( George Meredith, One of Our Conquerors )

( Justine Larbalestier, Magic or Madness )

( Elizabeth Bear, Dust )

( Tanith Lee, A Heroine of the World )

09:14 pm: Writing character clash stories
In the past, I’ve written rants about how I like stories where the plot forms naturally from the clash of characters’ personalities, as opposed to characters compelled against their wills by an outside force (destiny, a prophecy, the gods, unspeakably evil and inhuman villains, etc.) But how, exactly, do you achieve a character clash story? Especially when it’s so much easier to steal a set of tropes and plot devices from a famous or archetypal story and just use them instead?

( Here are some ways )

05:41 pm: Kage Baker, Race, and Gender (contains mild spoilers for the Company series)
It's bothersome. I already bought all ten books in the Company series, and I really do like the style of humor and the narrative drive behind the plot, so you'd think I'd zip right through them. But I'm stuck in the ninth one.

( Brief introduction to the Company series )

( Race and gender issues )

It's too bad, because I really do like the plot in these books. It moves along! It's connected! It's complex and ties back to itself! (I value that all the more because it's one of the qualities I read epic fantasy for, but other qualities inherent to the epic fantasy genre keep me from liking those books now). But the race and gender politics bother me to the point that I haven't felt like picking up Gods and Pawns in a week- and since I'm in the middle of a story where Mendoza and a white male character investigate the secrets of a native Bolivian tribe, I'm not really sure I want to finish.

04:30 pm: How to let your protagonist make mistakes
The title should be descriptive enough in and of itself, but just in case: I’ve said an awful lot about how authors should allow their protagonists to make mistakes more often and not simply know “intuitively” or “somehow” what the right thing to do is. But I appreciate that a protagonist who does so can look awfully stupid.

( Read more... )

10:40 am: Yet More Book Reviews
( Octavia Butler, The Xenogenesis Trilogy )

( Joan Slonczewski, A Door Into Ocean )

( Joanna Russ, To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction )

( George Meredith novels )

11:04 am: Rant on anti-heroes
A few people asked for a rant on anti-heroes. This is a collection of thoughts loosely organized around that topic.

( So if you have a morally ambiguous protagonist… )

09:18 pm: Seven more things heroines/female protagonists can do
The title of the rant explains itself, I think. I’ve put “more” in there because I’ve written rants in the past about different ways to diversify female characters, and slashed heroines/female protagonists because of the unfortunate connotation that “heroine” sometimes has.

( A lot of these are probably common sense, but still )

10:32 am: I has a feminist science fiction class!
A while ago, I proposed a feminist science fiction class at the university where I'm studying next semester. I didn't know if they'd actually accept it, as most of the women's literature classes focus on historical periods instead, but I thought it couldn't hurt to try.

They accepted it!

Next semester I will be teaching:

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
The Two of Them, Joanna Russ
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree, Jr.
Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia Butler
Daughters of Earth, ed. by Justine Larbaleister (this is a collection of both stories and critical essays about the stories).

I know some of the supplementary material I'll be adding to the class, like the two essays LeGuin wrote about gender in The Left Hand of Darkness and her short story "Winter's King," set in the same world. I'm looking forwards to finding more essays, well-written blog entries, and so on (though the class is mostly about older SF, I'd like to encourage my students to take a look at the online feminist SF community).

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be more than happy to look at them.

Tags: feminist sf class

08:40 pm: Book reviews: Bear and Monette, Morgan
Another attempt to clear some of the enormous backlog. Maybe shorter and more frequent posts will work for me, instead of trying to do them all at once.

( Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, A Companion to Wolves )

( Richard K. Mogan, Black Man/Thirteen )

04:08 pm: Even though I'm not officially participating in NaNo (because I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up the pace), I am writing a novel during November. It will all be public, because I want it that way, and will have a Creative Commons License put on it. Here is the first chapter of Fortune Favors the Bold.

10:06 pm: My thoughts on Acacia, let me show them to you.
Beware, as this post has mild spoilers for Acacia by David Anthony Durham.

Alas, I think I am giving up on Acacia. It's not a bad book, and it has a multiracial world and at least one seriously cool religious concept that I'm impressed with. But I think I've just grown too disenchanted with epic fantasy to have the kind of patience a book like this demands- especially when I don't particularly like any of the characters, and not enough time is spent in their viewpoints to interest me in them. Also, Thirteen has caught my attention to the point where it's hard to want to read anything else right now.

( Thoughts on why I no longer feel like reading epic fantasy )

It's odd, because I do still love secondary-world fantasy more than urban fantasy. But I think I've been lucky enough to find authors who are doing something a bit different with the concepts I like, and I've also changed my reading patterns to include a lot more science fiction lately, so I'm not noticing the real lack a dose of tolerable epic fantasy once would have left in my world.

03:50 pm: Not a Good Idea #345
Trying to read Richard K. Morgan's Thirteen, David Anthony Durham's Acacia*, Ian McDonald's Brasyl, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union all at the same time. Genres are, in order: next-century dystopia (to give you an idea, Morgan's version of the US is called Jesusland); epic fantasy (complete with infodumping and repetition that makes me roll my eyes, though I like some of the characters and basic ideas); mixture of historical novel, contemporary novel, and near-future SF novel, all set in Brazil (these three strands intertwine with one another, and not all the important words are in the glossary, even though the glossary claims they are there); and alternate history (the biggest Jewish community formed in the Alaskan Panhandle, not in Israel, which collapsed).

Unfortunately, they all came into the library for me at the same time, and I only have two weeks to read them. As well as grade and write and do all the other stuff that comprises my life.

Yay!

*How lazy am I? This lazy: I couldn't remember Durham's middle name, so I typed it into Google as I was writing this post instead of walking to the book which is less than ten feet away.

05:33 pm: Quick book review
Just a quick book review; there are many, many more coming if I ever get back up to speed. *looks in despair at enormous piles of books, both read and unread*

( Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch )

Tags: book reviews

10:11 am: The legal system, punishments, judgment, and "justice"
This is a questionnaire format more than anything else. I seem to be blocked on writing regular rants, so we’ll see how this works.

( Read more... )

09:59 pm: Eventual novel
I've started a novel journal (my first one unique to InsaneJournal) that will begin posting in November. (I'm going to use NaNoWriMo as a lift-off, though I doubt the novel will be completed in a month, and I probably won't keep to that exact posting pace of 1667 words a day). It'll also be public, and available under a Creative Commons License, as soon as I can figure out which one best allows for any use except a) someone else claiming they wrote it and b) someone else selling it for profit. I'm doing that because I want to.

If you want to take a look at it, a post summarizing the bare bones/beginning of the plot is here: Fortune Favors the Bold Its profile may also prove informative.

Tags: fortune favors the bold

09:14 pm: Rant on winged humanoids
Long time, no see.

( Once again, I chose to write this one just because I want to )

I can’t say what or when the next rant will be yet.

Tags: fantasy rants summer 2007, rants on nonhumans, worldbuilding: culture

01:16 pm: Another new InsaneJournal community
originalslash

This is for writers of original fiction about homosexual/bisexual/transgendered/queer characters who want to discuss, bitch, moan, and ask questions about such fiction. It specifically excludes fanfic and NaNoWriMo/NaNoWriYe updates.

(And yes, slash may be a problematic term to apply to original fiction, but it's one that many writers of this kind of fiction are used to using, and it will make it easier to find the comm).

Idea for the community and the user info are credited to the_willow, who first came up with the idea.

08:42 pm: More answers to poll questions.
( Read more... )

10:25 pm: First round of poll answers:

( Here they are )

Ask me more questions!

08:00 pm: I did this once, a long time ago, and it was fun.
And going back and editing old entries in this journal made me want to do it again, partially to commemorate the move to IJ. So:

Poll #263 I has a poll
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Ask me any question you like.

I'll put the answers up in another post when I have enough of them. Any question's fair game, though I might not answer if it gets too personal.