The Black Letters

New books for August

In an effort to stave off our ridiculous acquisitions rates, Kakaner and I have undertaken a pact not to buy any more new books until… well, for as long as we can possibly restrain ourselves, and hopefully we’ve actually read the greater part of the books we’ve bought but haven’t yet read. But prior to that, I, of course, bought a lot of books this summer. Ahem. Here are some of the ones that I’m most excited about.

A 1905 (?) edition of Lafcadio Hearn’s A Japanese Miscellany (originally published 1901) – I’ve been wanting to find a copy of his Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things for ages, with little luck given his relative obscurity. So I was astonished to see three beautiful, first-edition-or-nearly hardcovers of his works on a shelf at Skyline Books in New York City. No Kwaidan, but this seemed the next best thing. 1905 is pencilled in on the endpapers, but I suspect from this nifty index of Hearn’s work that I have the 1906 edition, which would make it second edition.

Continue reading New books for August

“Exhalation”, by Ted Chiang (2009) K

Date Read: 8.11.09
Read In: Night Shade Download
Reviewer: Kakaner

Exhalation is one of those special gems of short fiction that comes along only once in a while. The story belongs in a pocket of science fiction that not many people write in, and really stands out from the usual space fiction, sci-fi/fantasy meld, dystopia, or cyberpunk. It is about a world encased in a chromium bubble, in which the inhabitants are walking, living metal machines that survive on argon air, and one doctor sets out to discover the truth about their bodies.

The prose is fresh yet straightforward, very fitting for a scientist narrator. It’s also one of those stories that never drags but only continuously draws you in. I think the best part about Exhalation is its own “temporal ambiguity”– you really can’t tell if it’s supposed to be futuristic sci-fi, an AU, space fiction, or perhaps even “historical” sci-fi, and this quality lends the entire story a delicate air of surrealism. The conclusions drawn at the end by the doctor also indicate that this account, although short and delivered by one man, has serious implications and ramifications against the backdrop of the universe. Yet despite all the positive attributes, I didn’t feel an incredible emotional connection to the story. Perhaps it was the very precise narration, but I definitely felt like an observer instead of a participant.

I can’t say yet whether I believe this was the right choice for the 2009 Hugo Short Story winner. I feel like I understand one of the main reasons why it won, and that would be the cleverly crafted hard science fiction of the story. It’s been hard to find hard sci-fi like that of Exhalation in contemporary sci-fi. With cyberpunk on the rise, despite what I suspect to be at least half its readership having no background in cryptography or computation theory, I think it’s been a while since people have found truly great and accessible science fiction. Chiang’s fiction is logical, with great attention to detail, and the technology in his story is definitely based on science while still allowing every person to understand the mechanics of his world, and it is this accessibility makes Exhalation real and relatable. I am going to read the other Hugo nominations for a stronger basis of comparison.

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Ted Chiang

Valente on The Red Tree and horror

Author Catherynne M. Valente made a beautiful blog post yesterday on her reaction to reading Caitlin R. Kiernan’s newest release, The Red Tree. She discusses how she read the book, her early relationship (read: obsession) with horror novels, New England’s unique signficance in the horror genre, and what really lies at the center (or bottom) of horror – that is, not gore, but death, and secrets, and the horrible tension of not knowing them:

I just want to know. I always want to know. I want to know the secret at the bottom, and maybe horror as a genre still eats at me because it will not give me that answer, and so I can stay at the swollen, drawn out moment before revelation, the pre-orgasmic stretching before the inevitable tumble into disappointment and continuity errors. Good horror almost never shows all its cards, and yet I know the Queen of Spades and Clubs, oh, my terrible black Queens are there, and they would tell me all their worst deeds, if I could only keep my eyes open when the scary parts come, if I could only go down into my own basement, where the earth is frozen and lumpy and moldy, where I cannot bear to look.

I, for one, would be way excited to see Valente do a horror novel, which is what she certainly hints at wanting to do at the end of the post. Also, of course, this makes me want to get on top of reading Kiernan’s work – Alabaster came in the mail for me just this week!

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Catherynne M. Valente

“Behind the Mirror,” by Yoon Ha Lee (2007) E

Date read: 8.10.09
Read in: Coyote Wild
Reviewer: Emera

Yoon Ha Lee’s flash fiction (I did a word count out of curiosity – 223) “Behind the Mirror” is lovely, sad, and unsettling, and has one of the most memorable single lines I’ve read, that could be a poem all by itself. The story has an appropriately vanishing feel to it, a sort of silvery evanescence. I found one paragraph a little overwritten, which is troublesome in such a short piece, but it doesn’t really hurt the story as a whole.

“Behind the Mirror” appears in the first issue of online speculative fic/poetry quarterly Coyote Wild. Take a minute out of your day to enjoy Lee’s story. (That’s why I love short fiction – you can pop one in here and there so easily.)

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Yoon Ha Lee

Tell us a little bit about yourself…

In an attempt to get to know our readership better, we’d like to hear from you guys!

So if you see this post or follow this blog, please comment and respond to the following:

1) Where do you live?

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3) What one book do you think WE should read?

Thanks for reading! We’re really looking forward to see what you guys say!

Hugos a go-go

The winning Hugos have been declared, and I suspect that no one was too surprised by the results. For one, Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book did indeed take best novel, making this Gaiman’s fourth Hugo win, out of six nominations – one of which, for Anansi Boys, Gaiman actually turned down. Not a bad record, eh?

Other familiar names on the winning list included Ted Chiang, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, Ellen Datlow, Doctor Horrible, WALL-E… I was also very happy to see that Weird Tales won for best semi-prozine only two years after its reorganization/makeover, and that Electric Velocipede won for best fanzine.

Awards season

I can’t say I’m qualified to blog about genre fiction awards season, given that I generally straggle at least one year behind current offerings in the field, but I’m still having fun following the buzz surrounding the 2009 Hugo Awards and World Fantasy Awards, the shortlists for which have been released.

SF Signal has an interesting panel feature asking a dozen-odd genre folk the following questions about the Hugo Awards:

1. How would you rate the track record of the Hugo Awards at directing readers to the best that the genre has to offer?
2. How well do you think the Hugo shortlist, year over year, represents to the outside world what speculative fiction has to offer?
3. Which of this year’s finalists do you predict will receive the Hugo award for Best Novel?
4. Which of this year’s finalists do you think should receive the Hugo award for Best Novel?
5. Which books do you think were missing from this year’s list of Best Novel finalists?

It went on a bit long for me, so I stopped halfway through, but of what I read, I found Paul Graham Raven‘s answer to #2 particularly interesting and well-articulated. Steve Davidson’s responses were also useful in considering the history, scope, and overall “purpose” of the awards – mainly, that the Hugo Awards were not primarily conceived of as writing awards, but as gestures of recognition to a variety of figures in fandom. I guess that the idea of “best” is compelling enough that that ends up being the focus, as with all awards.

The top two trends in responses:

The Hugo Awards, being based on the votes of a small subset of people, are more likely to reward a particular sort of popularity than, necessarily, literary merit. This is expressed with varying degrees of resignation and ire by nearly every panelist.
Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book seems the top pick for best novel, with potential but unlikely competition from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. (It’s a battle of the Nei/als, as one panelist put it.)

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Hugo Awards nominees
World Fantasy Awards nominees

“Urchins, While Swimming,” by Catherynne M. Valente (2006) E

Date read: 8.5.09
Read in: Clarkesworld, Issue 3
Reviewer: Emera

Catherynne Valente‘s short story “Urchins, While Swimming” left me wide-eyed and breathless. It’s a simple, sorrowful, beautiful story, filled with unforgettable imagery and lyrical language. It’s about love between mothers and daughters, and falling in love, and the Russian rusalka myth. (Unless you already know it, you might not want to read it until after you’ve read the story.)

Below, a few of my favorite lines:

“The stars were salt-crystals floating in the window’s mire.”

“Artyom ate the same thing every day: smoked fish, black bread, blueberries folded in a pale green handkerchief.”

“…she did not say we drag the lake with us, even into the city, drag it behind us, a drowning shadow shot with green.”

For this story, Valente won the 2007 StorySouth Million Writers Award for Best Online Short Story; very cool, and deserving. Kakaner also lent me her copy of Valente’s The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden this weekend, and now I’m even more excited to start it.

Also, since both of us are so partial to short fiction, we’ll probably be inaugurating a secondary review index for short stories alone, which will require a monumental amount of effort, but hopefully be rewarding.

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Catherynne M. Valente

Lucy, by Jamaica Kincaid (1990) K

Date read: 11.17.07

Book from: Borrowed from Stephane

Reviewer: Kakaner

Summary

Lucy is 19 when she comes to America from the West Indies to be an au pair and escape her restrictive life. Her employers are the picture-perfect family– the parents are in love, they are rich, and they have perfect children. However, Lucy soon discovers that they are not what they seem, and all the while, she searches for her own niche in society as she transitions into adulthood.

Review

This novel was perfectly delectable in so many aspects, from writing to character development to story. Lucy as a whole relies on atmosphere and instead of action to propel the story, and it is a sort of eerily muffling yet discovering atmosphere. For every experience in America, Lucy would recall either a relevant or triggered memory from her time in the Indies. This juggling of worlds created delicious tension between old and new, responsibility and free will. The tensions between Lucy and the family members, particularly the wife, were so strange that sometimes I would stop and look at the cover of the book to reorient myself and remind myself that yes, I really was reading this seemingly innocent, slim novel with an artwork of a teenage girl on the cover.

Lucy herself is an incredibly atypical heroine. She has an objective and extremely cynical outlook on life, and you only slowly learn about why this is through her past. The expert sustaining of Lucy’s character and narration, as well as the delicate yet exposing portrayal of sexism and racism, are certainly testaments to Kincaid’s literary skills. I was incredibly lured by this book as soon as I started, and could not put it down until the end– Lucy’s story is real, tangible, and heart rending without resorting to dramatics. Kincaid’s autobiographical foundations are definitely visible in this novel which probably are what make Lucy such an honest and touching novel.

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Jamaica Kincaid