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

[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.