Worldcon Recs

[juliet]

Mirrored from Juliet Kemp.

Here is a list of the recs I picked up from various panels I attended at Worldcon. (These are likely not complete, but they’re the ones that I wrote down.)

In Defense of the Unlikeable Heroine:

• We Who Are About To – Joanna Russ

Non-Binary Representation In Fiction:

• Transcendent: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction – ed K M Szpara (anthology)
• The Black Tides of Heaven / The Red Threads of Fortune – JY Yang (forthcoming in Sept)
• Provenance – Ann Leckie (forthcoming, but read some on her website)
• Jacob’s Ladder – Elizabeth Bear
• River of Teeth – Sarah Gailey
• Pantomime – Laura Lam
• Killing Gravity – Corey J White
• Interactive fiction Craft phone games (Choice of Deathless/City’s Thirst) – Max Gladstone (you can play an nb character)
• “Masculinity is an Anxiety Disorder” (essay) – David J Schwartz
• Rose Lemberg
• Foz Meadows
• A Merc Rustad

Beyond the Dystopia

(This one should be complete as I moderated the panel and made a point of writing them down to tweet afterwards.)

• Two Faces of Tomorrow – James P Hogan
• Culture series – Iain M Banks
• Dragonlance
• Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders – Ada Palmer
• The Postman – David Brin
• A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed And Common Orbit – Becky Chambers
• Hospital Station – James White
• Malhutan Chronicles – Tom D Wright (panelist)
• Orbital Cloud – Taiyo Fuji (panelist)
• The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

Older Women in Genre Fiction:

• All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye – Christopher Brookmyre
• Blood Songs series – Anthony Ryan
• Remnant Population – Elizabeth Moon
• Barbara Hambly

Also, Catherine Lundoff keeps a bibliography of books with older women protagonists.

Colonialism and the Space Opera:

• Praxis – John Williams

Moving Beyond Orientalism in SFF:

• Black Wolves – Kate Elliot
• Vixen and The Waves – Hoa Pham
• Isabelle Yap
• Ken Liu
• Stephanie Lai
• Zen Cho

(Plus one from Nine Worlds in which the MC has Borderline Personality Disorder: Borderline – Mishell Baker)

Comments

[menthe_reglisse]

Ooh, thanks especially for the older women ones. And Elizabeth Moon has written one of them! I loved Speed of Dark. And very timely as my staycation starts on Saturday and my reading pile is currently only 1 trashy novel from the charity shop.

[juliet]

Gosh. Would you like my to-read pile instead? It is scaring me a bit.

(For holiday reading, if you like the cheerful, I strongly recommend The Goblin Emperor, also the Becky Chambers Ines, all of which are utterly lovely. Most of the rest I haven't read myself yet :) )

[menthe_reglisse]

Thank you, I will have a Kindle frenzy right now.

[juliet]

that should be "Becky Chambers ones" not "Ines", thank you autocorrect.

[watersword]

Thank you for this!

[slightlycanted]

Thanks for this! I must try the Goblin Emperor, I see it suggested in a lot of places.

My recs within your recs are all on the 'lovely' side: Becky Chambers is lovely and cheering. Rag-tag bunch of misfits being friends and having adventures.

Foz Meadows contributed to the Shakespearean shared-world collection Monstrous Little Voices with a nice Tempest-themed gender-messing piece. These pieces of theirs are yet fluffier: http://thefantasistmag.com/three-short-stories/

Zen Cho's Sorceror to the Crown is a gem if you like Regency stuff. It's a romp, but bits of it are heart-wringing.

[juliet]

Read The Goblin Emperor, it is wonderful! Every time I recommend it to someone I am at grave risk of re-reading it myself.

I know & love the Becky Chambers books, & I liked Sorceror to the Crown, too. I've just finished reading A Citadel of Stars by Foz Meadows which I really enjoyed (& must read sequel when book budget recovers); I'll check out that story, thanks!

[slightlycanted]

So sorry to have assumed they were all on your 'to read' - didn't mean to patronise! Thanks for capturing them all, am browsing the ones I'd not seen before. Glad to have another vote for the Goblin, I will get onto that.

[juliet]

Oh no, not at all! I was just sharing your enthusing :)

I think most of it is stuff I haven't read (as I was for obvious reasons more likely to write those down) but for my own panel I included my own recs ;) and for the NB panel I got a full list off one of the panellists afterwards.

[juliet]

Aw those Foz Meadows stories were exactly what I needed this evening :) thank you for the link!

[menthe_reglisse]

Amazon's review of Sorcerer to the Crown had me at 'cross between Georgette Heyer and Susanna Clarke'

[yatima]

Couple of mild Mondegreens I noticed: Ann Leckie's new one is Provenance, and the Elizabeth Moon is Remnant Population.

[juliet]

Thanks! Fixed!

[drplokta]

The Two Faces of Tomorrow is a good read, as is much of Hogan's other early work. But I advise against reading anything he wrote in the past two or three decades.

[juliet]

right you are!

[ewx]

+1 for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

[mrs_leroy_brown]

My to-read pile has dwindled somewhat so obs time to stack up again, quite a few interesting things and enthusiastic recommendations! Am tempted by/wary of BPD, as I'm at once drawn to narratives by people with BPD, but often feel alienated as they rarely reflect my experience, but that's the nature of the beast I suppose (don't get me started on Girl, Interrupted).

[juliet]

FWIW that rec came from a panel on neurodiversity & I believe all the panellists were ND (& all had very strong opinions on realistic & non-sucky portrayals of mental health stuff) - can't remember if the person who recced it had BPD themself though.

[mrs_leroy_brown]

I get that, but tbh my experience is that it doesn't really matter - I usually feel alienated but this is a my brain thing rather than a criticism of the portrayal, if you get what I mean.