Year: 2012

Ishtar by Kaaron Warren, Deborah Biancotti and Cat Sparks – review

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading Challenge. All my AWWC reviews can be found here.

Ishtar is a collection of three novellas, each dealing with the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war and sex Ishtar. The book is cleverly put together, with each novella putting the Ishtar character in very different time settings (one in the ancient past, one in contemporary times and one in a dystopian future). This, combined with radically different story telling styles, avoids any continuity issues.

Having said that, the stories do work very well together. While they have obviously been written separately and in completely different styles, there are quite a few shared details that make the collection feel cohesive. Excellent editing must have gone into making this collection work as more than the sum of its parts.

For those who don’t know much about Ishtar mythology (such as yours truly for instance), the collection is an interesting insight into an unfamiliar pantheon. The stories seem very well researched (to the point of having a reference material bibliography at the back of the book for one of the novellas). Those who are better versed in Assyrian/Babylonion lore will probably find a layer of interpretation and meaning that eludes a newcomer such as myself.

In recent weeks the collection has been nominated in the Best Collected Work category for the Ditmars (Australian speculative fiction popular vote award) and in the Best Anthology category for the Aurealis Awards (Australian speculative fiction judged award).

The Five Loves of Ishtar by Kaaron Warren in the first story in the collection. Each of the titular five loves are spread out over a large timescale in ancient history and their stories are told as separate “sub-stories”. Ms Warren uses a third party narrator to describe each of the tales, but makes each narrator from a single family line of washerwomen servants to the goddess. This cleverly allows her to use different voices in telling each of the stories, while still maintaining a sense of connection between them. It also was a very effective in conveying the timescale of the story.

Ms Warren does an excellent job of capturing the mercurial nature of the goddess, and the ancient setting does make the reader feel like they are learning something as well as being entertained. The switch between voices of the very human washerwomen and their insights into the nature of the relationships playing out for the goddess made it much more interesting than if Ishtar or her lovers had been the point of view character.

And The Dead Shall Outnumber the Living by Deborah Biancotti is the middle novella of the collection. Set in modern day Sydney, the story follows a detective, Adrienne Garner, investigating a string of bizarre murders which lead her fairly quickly to a Ishtar worshipping cult.

The style of the story reminded me of some of the stories in Ms Biancotti’s Bad Power. It has a dark contemporary urban fantasy feel. The fantastical elements build in a very satisfying manner from the start of the story. The story moved at a fair clip, with a lot of action occurring (especially in the last third of the novella). This was the quickest read of the collection for me.

The main character, Adrienne, is well drawn and sympathetic. She is obviously very competent and experienced, but has an edge of fragility which makes the reader concerned for her ability to deal with the increasingly bizarre circumstances she finds herself in. The fact that she rises to the occasion makes for a very satisfying character arc.

For readers living in or familiar with Sydney, there are a lot of landmarks called out. Most of the action centres around places most people will recognise regardless of their knowledge of the city (the Harbour Bridge, Opera House etc), but there were also a lot of references to slightly more obscure locations which allows the native Sydneysider to feel knowledgable and slightly smug (which shows that Ms Biancotti knows what that particular target market likes).

And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living has been nominated for a lot of awards, including Horror Short Story in the Aurealis Awards,  Best Novella or Novellette in the Ditmar Awards and the Novella category in the Shirley Jackson Awards (international award focusing on “dark” speculative fiction).

The collection is rounded out by The Sleeping and the Dead by Cat Sparks. This story is set in the future, after some referenced but not fully explained war that has left the world devestated (some linkages between the novellas are drawn on to leave the reader wondering more about the events at the end of And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living). Anna is a doctor working in a remote location providing fertility treatments to the increasingly desperate women who survived the devestation (and there aren’t many of them).

Anna hears of a man running an underground facility who may or may not be a former lover. The story of her attempts to find him, and her discovery of more and more about herself and her past, form the spine of this novella.

The story is written in a very different style again from the first two, and this is a very different take on Ishtar. It was very interesting how the details of the dystopian world harken back to the mythology explored in the earlier stories. Without saying too much about the end, there was a feeling of a circle being completed.

Ms Sparks sketches fantastically vivid minor characters with an enviable economy, which added to the ambiance of the novel. The locations were also well realised and suitably hellish for a dystopia. I was particularly partial to some of the imagery when Anna could see visions of the time before superimposed over the wastelands around her.

The Sleeping and the Dead has been nominated in the Best Novella or Novellette category in the Ditmar Awards.

Ishtar was very enjoyable and I can certainly see why it has garnered such praise and award nominations. Highly recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Antipodean SF Radio Show – Episode 166 Beta

The latest episode of the Antipodean SF radio program is now out. This fortnight’s show features the usual array of stories and music.

I narrated a story by another author. The Red Button by Lynda R Young was a lot of fun to narrate – I even tried different voices! Nuke starts to describe the story at about the 7 minute mark, with the story starting at about 7 minutes 40 seconds.

I also had a 50 word story in this edition called Beware Antipodean Shores. It’s about drop bears. Nuke’s intro starts about the 28 minute 45 second mark, with the story itself at around 29 minutes.

If you get a chance to listen I hope you enjoy!

When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett – review

My most recent review for the Australian Women Writers’ 2012 Reading Challenge is of When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett. Elizabeth Lhuede, the force behind the Australian Women Writers website, kindly asked me to provide a review for the website. As such, you’ll have to make one click in order to read what I thought about the book – the review can be found on the AWW site here.

Spoiler – I liked it.

 

Edit 2/1/2013:

I’ve decided to include the text of the review here for posterity (and to make sure I also have all my reviews in one place)

When We Have Wings is NSW based author Claire Corbett’s debut novel. This intriguing story is set in an interesting world where genetic manipulation has made it possible for people to have wings surgically integrated with their bodies. It is still relatively early days for this technology, and wings are the ultimate status symbol – only the very rich can afford them.

When We Have Wings

The story is told from the perspective of two protagonists. The first is Peri, a very young woman who has grown up in the country and comes to the city to be a wet nurse for a rich flier couple. She uses the money and contacts that come from her position to pursue her life long dream of buying herself wings. The story opens with the newly winged Peri learning of the death of a fellow nanny and fleeing the city with the baby she is caring for in tow.

The second protagonist is Zeke, an ex-cop and now private detective who is hired by the flier couple to find Peri and their son Hugo. Zeke is middle aged and divorced, with some limited access to his young son Thomas. His ex-wife is pushing hard for Thomas to start undergoing treatments to become a flier, and Zeke’s deliberations about whether to consent form a compelling sub-plot.

The structure of the novel is very interesting, with alternate chapters written from Peri and Zeke’s perspectives. The chapters showing Peri’s point of view are told in third person and read a little like an urban fantasy. The addition of wings, although explained from a scientific basis, give Peri a “power”, and her story has the feel of a person on quest to master that power as well as achieve her stated goals.

Contrastingly, the chapters that tell Zeke’s story are told in first person and read more like a crime novel (with fantastic elements of course). The use of first person, so readily identified with a “gumshoe” story, and highlights this change in tone quite effectively. Both characters are drawn sympathetically and with good depth, which helps draw the reader through a longer than average story.

The first thing that really struck me about the novel was the location. While never explicitly stated, the story felt like it was set in a future version of Australia and the “City” was Sydney rolled forward. I had great fun trying to fit the version of Sydney I walk through each morning on my way to work to that described in the novel. This resulted in a fantastic sense of place with enough detail to feel like a legitimate sketch of a possible future world. The description was cleverly done, in that an Australian reader would take something extra away from the story, but the lack of definitive landmarks makes the story accessible to anyone no matter where they are from.

It was also interesting to read a novel that extrapolates issues like climate change without invoking a dystopia, but rather proposes a more gradual change that humankind has adapted to. Higher water levels, an increasingly tropic climate and the exhaustion of fossil fuels have obviously happened, but not caused the end of the world. This has led to some thought provoking technological evolution as well as some interesting social policy, further extending the city/bush divide that currently exists in Australia.

There were a lot of compelling topics covered in this novel. The dilemmas parents face when deciding whether to intervene to “improve” children were particularly strongly drawn. In the character of Zeke, Ms Corbett did an excellent job of capturing the mindset of many fathers and the concerns of all parents trying to do the best for their children in an increasingly complex world. While we haven’t quite reached the point where we have to worry about whether or not to give children wings, the debate was an effective way of highlighting the increasingly complex choices parents face (e.g. private vs public schooling, extra curricular activities, playing vs learning etc). I felt a lot of empathy for Zeke and the decisions he was trying to work through regarding his son.

But that wasn’t the only issue covered by any stretch of the imagination. The ethics of the wealthy outsourcing more and more of their personal life to the poor, politics making strange bedfellows, the grinding inhumanity that can come from bureaucracy, the horror of human trafficking, divorce and single parent guilt, subtle and patient revenge – this story had it all. In thinking about this review, I started to wonder whether there were too many issues packed in, but when in the middle of reading the book it didn’t seem overly crowded. Ms Corbett did an excellent job layering them all so that they were subordinate to the story, but it certainly did create a lot to think about once my reading was done.

The description of the physical act of flying was very evocative, but lost me a little with the detail. The middle third of the book concentrated a lot on flying and more knowledgeable reviewers have indicated that the detail provided is very well researched. Certainly it all seemed very plausible to me as a lay person. However, with large amount of text dedicated to the description of flight it did feel like the plot slowed down in this part, although someone who has a strong interest in flying would probably not have found this to be the case.

The plot itself was sharp in the beginning and end, and had a mix of sleuthing and just below the surface politics that is very appealing. The mystery at the heart of the story was strong enough to hold everything together. While the novels are very different, the mixture of mystery wrapped in an implied political landscape reminded me a bit of The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood, another hugely enjoyable novel that has formed part of my AWWC reading.

In 2011 Ms Corbett spoke on a panel at the NSW Speculative Fiction Festival, where she mentioned that she had worked for the NSW public service at one stage in her career. I was reminded of this when reading her descriptions of some of the bureaucratic organisations in the novel. Having spent a lot of my career working as a public servant, her depiction of these organisations was very authentic and resonated strongly with my own experiences.

Without giving any of the plot away, I will say that this novel has a beautiful ending. The last couple of pages were particularly moving with lovely imagery and generated some strong emotion. The ending was also good from a plot perspective with enough being wrapped up to bring the book to a close, but enough left messy to feel realistic.

When We Have Wings is an excellent debut novel and I am looking forward to reading more of Ms Corbett’s work. Highly recommended.

The Writer and the Critic episode 18

I don’t normally write posts about individual episodes of the podcasts that I listen to, but in this month’s episode of one of my favourite podcasts The Writer and the Critic they covered my feedback. And talked about it for a while.

I listen to a few podcasts, so I first became aware of the fact that my comments were talked about from a post on Sean the Bookonaut’s website (by the way, if you are in any way interested in the Australian speculative fiction community, Sean’s website Adventures of a Bookonaut is a “must subscribe” – he publishes news, book reviews and other pieces of general interest on a daily basis. Well worth checking out).

I knew which piece of feedback they would be talking about. And I became worried. Was my question so asinine that they had to devote significant amounts of time to mocking it? The question was related to gender and reading habits, had I inadvertently said something massively offensive? I immediately bumped The Writer and the Critic up to the top of my podcast listening list and listened in on my walk to work this morning.

Fortunately and to my everlasting relief, the presenters (Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond) actually liked my question and spent a good amount of time responding to it. If you’re interested, I’d definitely recommend going and having a listen. Suffice to say the answer was excellent, giving me much more food for thought.

My engagement with the broader speculative fiction community is unfortunately constrained by the business of life, so I really get a kick out of experiencing some of these kinds of interactions.

The value of a detailed critique

As mentioned in previous articles, as I come across something new (for me) in my writing journey I’m trying to jot something down about it. These posts will be of little to no interest to established writers, but for someone new to the writing game they might be of interest. Or not. Read on at your peril.

Recently, a generous friend agreed to be a “critiquing partner” and we exchanged stories for review. I am very much the junior partner in this enterprise – my friend is a much more experienced writer who is really hitting her stride at the moment. I don’t have much in the way of a network across the speculative fiction community, so to have someone take enough of an interest to agree to read through some of my work was very encouraging.

It is the first time I had released an early draft story to someone, and it was nerve wracking to have something of mine “out there”. I’ve commented elsewhere on how much I enjoy the editing process with the editor of Antipodean SF (Ion “Nuke” Newcombe), but this critiquing experience was something new and different.

I was the first off the mark reviewing a chapter of a novel my friend is working on. The experience of giving feedback was very interesting. I wasn’t really sure how much detail to go into. I didn’t want to cause offence, but I wanted the critique to be useful. I also wanted to indicate through the nature of my comments that I was open to detailed and hard hitting (where needed) feedback on my own work.

Fortunately my friend is an excellent writer so I wasn’t faced with any fundamental issues to deal with (I can only imagine what it must be like to have to break it to someone that you didn’t like their story at all!). I then had the excellent experience of trying to put into words why I liked or disliked things in the text. It was interesting to work through a piece in that way, and it made me think a lot about the process of writing.

With nerves singing I sent off the comments. My friend took them well, and even expressed gratitude. My relief was palpable.

So what did I learn from the experience? I learnt that the more pedantic and detailed the comments the better (at least for my friend). I learnt that it was OK to express an opinion on something knowing that the recipient was under no obligation to agree. I learnt that working out why you like something is just as hard as working out why you don’t. I learnt that it is OK to say something isn’t quite sitting right with you even if you can’t pin down exactly why – it at least gives the author an area to focus on.

I learnt a lot.

It was then my turn to receive comments. I should start by saying that I was happy with the story I sent through. It was short (about 2,000 words) and I’d been playing around with it for a while. I was at the point where I wasn’t really seeing it anymore – too much tinkering will do that to a person. But I thought to myself ‘this is probably one of your most solid pieces of work – send it through so you don’t embarrass yourself with some of the other stuff you’ve got sitting around’. So when I saw the sheer amount of virtual red ink flash up in the returned document, I almost gave up my writing career before reading the first comment. But I steeled myself and started in.

Best.

Writing.

Experience.

Ever.

The comments were thoughtful and intelligent. I learned a lot about how to lay out work more professionally and was reminded that my vague memories of high school English classes weren’t really cutting it when it came to writing fiction (there is not a lot of call for sharp dialogue when putting together a brief in the public service).

I was called on some lazy use of language and a structural problem with the first half of the story. As I worked through the comments in detail and applied them to the first draft, I gained a better appreciation of some elements of better writing than I had in months of looking at things by myself.

By the time I finished I had a second draft I was much happier with. I have a whole lot of work to do to rework most of my other draft material, but it is good work. Work that will substantially improve the stories.

One thing I learnt about myself was that even though writing briefs for government doesn’t necessarily help with all aspects of writing fiction, it has helped in one substantive area – the receiving of feedback. Many years of being focused on requiring the best possible work to get an outcome has helped me reduce the ego involved in receiving comments. If I got cranky every time someone pointed out a problem with my writing at work, I’d spend more time than is healthy being cross. And my proposals wouldn’t get anywhere.

So, while my other talents may be mediocre I hope I’ll be able to become a world class feedback receiver. If this experience is in any way representative, I’d strongly recommend any other new writers out there try to do the same. And if you can find yourself someone who’s writing you admire and who is willing to have a look at your work, grab onto the opportunity with both hands.

What have your experiences with critiquing been like? Leave a comment and let me know.

 

ePub version of Antipodean SF

In my ongoing quest to learn more about the speculative fiction community in general and writing and publishing in particular, I’ve pestered the person who has edited most of my published work (Ion “Nuke” Newcombe at Antipodean SF) with a lot of questions. He has always been very generous with his time and allowed me to participate in various aspects of his publication (chiefly lending my voice to some narration and contributing a non-fiction article).

My latest endeavour in a similar space has been working on an ePub edition of Antipodean SF. Included in each edition is the ten stories from the website that month, that month’s movie and/or book reviews as well as any editorial content from Nuke.

I’m pleased to say that the first edition is now available at the Antipodean SF eReader page, or at the download site for the AntiSF radio show.

It’s been a very interesting experience. I use the Scrivener product for most of my writing, so I have used it to create the ePub version of the website. I know Nuke is always interested in feedback, and I would love to hear from anyone with suggestions on how to improve the publication.

As I publish this post, I’m putting the finishing touches on next month’s edition (May 2012 – Issue 167). Lots of learning going on!

 

Star Trek Enterprise: To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin

Star Trek Enterprise was one of those TV series I started watching from a vague sense of obligation to the franchise, but came to really enjoy. I was genuinely disappointed when it got cancelled, and due to it finishing “before its time” I found the last season to be very rushed. I had also hoped that later seasons would have dealt with the often mentioned but vaguely described Earth/Romunlan war in the lead up to the establishment of the Federation.

It was with that in mind that I eventually started reading some of the novels that took the series further, including The Good That Men Do, The Kobayashi Maru and the two Romulan War novels, which culminated in To Brave the Storm by Michael A. Martin.

I can only admire the lengths people have gone to in describing why the Kirk era starships seem so much less advanced than this prequel, why Klingons look like humans in dodgy makeup etc – there has been a lot of ingenuity shown through the TV series and books alike. The storyline behind the Romulan War was quite interesting, and reading the books has certainly served to answer a lot of questions raised by the TV series.

The book was written solidly, with a good “back against the wall while fighting a losing battle” plot. I was a little disappointed with the resolution of the war, which seemed to owe more to serendipity than planning, however this didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the novel.

Add a star if you always felt Enterprise the TV series ended too soon.

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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Analog – April 2012 – review

Analog Science Fiction and Fact for April 2012.

The Most Invasive Species by Susan Forest is a very interesting piece exploring the application of human cultural bias onto alien species. With this kind of story there is always the danger of the end result being a little preachy, but a good choice of protagonist and solid story telling allowed Ms Forest to avoid that fate.

Ecce Signum by Craig DeLancey has at its heart a couple of very interesting ideas – an extrapolation of mobile technology to the point where people don’t really even need to speak to each other anymore, and the idea of genetically engineering people to take a longer term view of life on the planet. This was a well written story, with good pacing and an interesting future world painted in enough detail to provide great food for thought. As is my custom, I won’t say anything about the end of the novel except to speculate that the story must have been influenced by the current world obsession with Wikileaks!

I liked the twist in A Delicate Balance by Kevin J. Anderson, and thought the world of the restrictive colony environment was very well realised.

To Serve Aliens (Yes, It’s a Cookbook) by Eric James Stone was very funny. All hail our elephant overlords.

Also in this issue:

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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

SQ Mag – Edition 1 (March 2012) – review

I recently came across the first edition of SQ Mag, an online magazine specialising in international speculative fiction. It is published out of Melbourne by IFWG Publishing and edited by Sophie Yorkston (Editor In Chief) and Gerry Huntman (Publisher and Contributing Editor).

I really enjoyed the fact that this is a magazine focusing on publications from across the globe, although admittedly only English pieces. Each story is tagged with a flag indicating the “style” of English used (American English, UK English, Australian English etc). It will be published every couple of months, and is available in ePub and Kindle formats as well as HTML.

Rationalized by Larry Hodges (Sci-fi) outlined the tale of a group of people attempting to avoid the emotional sterilisation that the human race has imposed on itself. The writing is solid and for a story about lack of emotion, it packs an emotional punch.

Witness by Laura Haddock (Sci-fi) describes an unexpected scientific advance that gives the dead one last chance to have their say. I liked the protagonist and thought the ending was strong.

No Free Parking at Journeys End by Louis Baum (Sci-fi) describes the dangers of being amongst the first to head out into interstellar space when relativity and the possibility of significant technological advance combine.

Also in this edition:

  • Nullus by Michael Edgeworth (Horror)
  • Toxic Sludge by Tom Ribas and Lee Lackey (Fantasy)
  • Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Mysti Parker, reviewer)
  • Neighborhood Watch by Jennifer Solomon (Horror)
  • Serial Fiction: Avoiding The Searchers Part 1 by MF Burbaugh
  • Bone Park (Windscreams) by Bruce Memblatt (Horror)
  • Navigator by Shane Ward (Sci-fi)

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This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

Make Mine a Macchiato – AntiSF podcast

One of my latest stories, Make Mine a Macchiato, is now available in audio form on the Antipodean SF radio show episode 166 alpha.

Antipodean SF editor and radio show host Nuke starts giving some background on me at about the 2 minute mark, with the story itself starting at 3 minutes.

For a full list of my published stories, see my bibliography.