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Recommended Reads for October 2013

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Recommended Reads is a monthly feature in which the Skiffy and Fanty crew tell you about one thing they recently read that they think you might like too. Here are their picks: Shaun Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (Orbit Books:  Oct. 2013) To say that a lot of people are talking about this book is an understatement.  Yet, the amount of buzz Leckie has received for Ancillary Justice, her debut novel, is deserved.  This is the kind of military SF / space opera a lot of us have been waiting for.  From the first pages, the novel tears down our comfortable notions of self and gender, pulls apart language to display its arbitrary construction in relation to culture, and shoves us right smack dab in the middle of a sprawling, reminiscent empire.  It’s the kind of novel that my geek side can squee about without end…oh, hell, my academic side is doing that too.  If you’re looking for

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My Superpower: Gail Z. Martin

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Gail Z. Martin to talk about how Chasing Squirrels helps her create many things, including Ice Forged, which will be a Kindle deal of the day on the 31st of October.  My superpower is chasing squirrels. Not the fuzzy kind, the mental kind. I’m an “ooh, shiny!” kind of girl, but it’s not Tiffany’s bling that catches my eye; it’s usually something on the History Channel, or a footnote on Wikipedia, or a stray reference that I chase down “for authenticity’s sake.” It starts out as a noble cause. After all, as a writer, it’s important to fact-check. That’s dangerous when you’re the kind of person who can go to the dictionary to look up a word and not come up for air for an hour because you’ve hopped from one interesting new word to another. Fact checking is like that, too. I go

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The Disquieting Guest — Readerly, Writerly and Malevolent

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In the last week or so, there have been interesting discussions about the pros and cons of “cozy” fiction by Justin Landon (here) and on Sam Sykes (here). Those exchanges made me think of Roland Barthes’ distinctions between the “readerly” and the “writerly” text. Said distinction is summarized here.  According to Barthes in S/Z, the readerly text is one where the reader is passive, “plunged into a kind of idleness […], left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text,” whereas the writerly text’s goal is “to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text.” The writerly text places greater demands on the reader, forces an active engagement with the text. It is disruptive and destabilizes the reading experience. Barthes is unequivocal in seeing the readerly text as entirely retrograde. The distinctions are, furthermore, usually deployed in a way that would see “readerly” and “cozy” as nearly synonymous. I find, however, a certain use in doing some violence to Barthes’ project and using the terms in a more descriptive, rather than prescriptive fashion, at least in the context of the aforementioned discussions. One reason for my caution is that the usual schema of “readerly=easy to

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Mining the Genre Asteroid: Time Out of Joint by Philip K Dick

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Mining the Genre Asteroid is Paul Weimer’s look at the history of the science fiction and fantasy field, bringing to light important, interesting and entertaining books from science fiction and fantasy’s past to you. A seemingly ordinary 1950’s slice of Suburbia. Ragle Gumm spends his days working on the “Where will the Little Man be Next” puzzle for the local paper. As the reigning champion of solving the daily puzzle, it is practically a full time job for him. But, then, when a soft drink stand disappears before Ragle’s eyes, to have a piece of paper with the words “soft drink stand” fall to the ground, things are clearly not what they appear. Especially since, judging from the drawerful of paper slips,  it becomes clear that this has happened to Gumm before…

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A Book by Its Cover: The Curiosity

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Timothy “Buttons” McBanks is the greatest door-to-door cane salesman of his generation. There isn’t a cane he cannot sell: bamboo sticks from the heart of the Orient, wrought iron from Detroit City, and even twisted lengths of cursed yew from the blackest depths of the Queen’s England. A plaque set into the

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

172. J.A. Pitts, Emma Newman, and Arley Sorg at Worldcon

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode172JAPittsEmmaNewmanAndArleySorg/SandF%20–%20Episode%20172%20–%20JA%20Pitts%2C%20Emma%20Newman%2C%20and%20Arley%20Sorg.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSGaming, other worlds, and fantasy armor, oh my!  J.A. Pitts, Emma Newman, and Arley Sorg joined Shaun and Jen at Worldcon earlier this year to talk about their work, writing fantasy, tabletop gaming, armor, fandom, and so much more! We hope you enjoy the episode! Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 172 — Download (MP3) Show Notes John’s Website Emma’s Website Arley’s Website Angry Robot Books You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

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