Taken from Science Fiction Awards Watch:

• Lifetime Achievement: Ellen Asher & Jane Yolen
• Best Novel (tie): The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow) & Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin; Knopf)
• Best Novella: “If Angels Fight”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
• Best Short Story: “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
• Best Anthology: Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed. (Senses Five Press)
• Best Collection: The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford (HarperPerennial)
• Best Artist: Shaun Tan
• Special Award – Professional: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
• Special Award – Non-Professional: Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)

The judges for 2009 were: Jenny Blackford, Peter Heck, Ellen Klages, Chris Roberson & Delia Sherman.

Very deserving winners.  I thought it’d be between Ford and Lanagan and it’s nice that both of them get the honor, as they had written some of the best fiction that I read in 2008.  Same goes for Ford for the collection and Shaun Tan for Best Artist.  In the anthology category, any of the works nominated would have been a good choice, but congrats to Kathy Sedia for Paper Cities winning!

Interesting how the winners in the Best Novel category didn’t correspond with the poll I ran huh?

Kage Baker, The House of the Stag	6 (5%)
Jeffrey Ford, The Shadow Year	8 (7%)
Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book	31 (29%)
Daryl Gregory, Pandemonium	4 (3%)
Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels	7 (6%)
Don’t care about any of them, to be honest	48 (46%)

This time, it was Harry Markov from Temple Library Reviews who decided for some odd reason that I would make for a good interview subject.  Click on the link above and go decide for yourself if I have had an interesting life.  Or just go because you might like Harry’s site.  Or maybe just go because you’d love to know more about rabid squirrels and foxlings?

I’ve known about this for over a month now, but was asked to be mum about it until it was announced at the World Fantasy Convention.  Friday, a series of people, including the University of California at Riverside (who are the planned hosts for this award) announced the creation of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards, which aims to do for non-English SF/F translated into English that awards such as the Seiun Awards, Premio Ignotus, Utopiales, and other awards from Asia and Europe do to honor foreign translations of SF/F works into their native languages.

About damn time.  Between this and the expansion of the Best American Fantasy anthology series (starting in 2011) to cover translated fictions from Latin America, there will be much greater coverage and hopefully awareness of excellent works being produced outside the Anglophone regions.  Expect more coverage of these matters here at this blog (and obviously at the blogs/sites of those contributing to the founding of these translation awards) in the coming months and years, as this is something that appeals to me for obvious reasons.

Been over a month since I’ve updated my 2009 reading list, so here are the books I’ve read over the past five weeks or so, with tiny commentaries:

369  Jaime Martínez Tolentino, Cuentos Fantásticos (Spanish) (decent)

370  Hayo Miyazaki, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, vol. I (good)

371  Italo Calvino, The Path to the Spiders’ Nest (very good)

372  Scott Mills, Big Clay Pot (good)

373  Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis (very good for much of the way, but too short)

374  Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (re-read) (classic)

375  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poesías de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Spanish) (OK)

376  Zoran Živković, Impossible Stories II (very good collection)

377 Zoran Živković, Amarkord (Serbian) (very good)

378  Nick Tapalansky and Alex Eckman-Lawn, Awakening:  Volume I (good to very good)

379  Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (excellent)

380  Pat Barker, The Man Who Wasn’t There (very good)

381  Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books (outstanding)

382  J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (decent)

383  Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (very good)

384  Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (very good)

385  Amanda Downum, The Drowning City (meh)

386  Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl (good to very good)

387  Peter Straub (ed.), American Fantastic Tales:  Terror and the Uncanny:  From Poe to the Pulps (excellent)

388   Peter Straub (ed.), American Fantastic Tales:  Terror and the Uncanny: From the 1940s to Now (outstanding)

389  Sergio Toppi, Sparrow:  Volume 12 (artbook) (very good)

390  John Watkiss, Sparrow:  Volume 11 (artbook) (very good)

391  Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (re-read) (excellent)

392  Gail Carriger, Soulless (very good debut novel)

393  Ashley Wood, Sparrow:  Volume 0  (artbook) (very good)

394  Ashley Wood, Sparrow:  Volume 1 (artbook) (very good)

395  Phil Hale, Sparrow:  Volume 2 (artbook) (very good)

396  Kent Williams, Sparrow:  Volume 3 (artbook) (very good)

397  Shane Glines, Sparrow:  Volume 4 (artbook) (very good)

398  Phil Hale, Sparrow:  Volume 5 (artbook) (very good)

399  Vladimir Nabokov, Novels and Memoirs 1941-1951 (Library of America omnibus) (excellent to outstanding)

400  Kristin Cashore, Fire (excellent)

401  Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (excellent to outstanding)

402  Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing… (already reviewed, but very good)

403  David Ratte, Toxic Planet (very good)

404  Camilla d’Errico, Sparrow:  Volume 13 (artbook) (very good)

405  Jeff VanderMeer, Shriek:  An Afterword (re-read) (excellent)

406  Vladimir Nabokov, Glory (excellent)

407  Dave Eggers, The Wild Things (excellent)

408  Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (very good)

409  William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (good)

410  Clive Barker, The Books of Blood (very good)

411  Olga Dugina and Andrej Dugin, The Brave Little Tailor (very good to excellent)

412  Sergio Toppi, Sharaz-De:  Volume 1 (excellent to outstanding)

413  Sergio Toppi, Sharaz-De:  Volume 2 (excellent)

414  Jeff VanderMeer, Booklife (review forthcoming; very good to excellent; non-fiction)

415  Scott Mills, Trenches (good)

416  Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham (re-read) (classic)

417  Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams (good to very good)

418  Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, The Gathering Storm (already reviewed; very good)

419  H.P. Lovecraft, Tales (Library of America omnibus) (excellent)

420  Philip K. Dick, Four Novels of the 1960s (Library of America omnibus) (very good)

421  Gustavo Arellano, ¡Ask a Mexican! (very good; non-fiction)

422  Jonathan Strahan (ed.), Eclipse Three (very good)

423  Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies (excellent)

424  Jeff Lemire, The Nobody (excellent to outstanding)

425  Denis Diderot and D’Alembert, L’Encyclopédie:  Art de L’Escrime (French) (good; non-fiction)

426  J.M. Coetzee, Youth (good)

427  Rick Berry, Sparrow:  Volume 6 (artbook) (very good)

In Progress:

Jeff Lemire, Essex County (omnibus, with new material, outstanding so far, 2/3 in)

Ellen Datlow (ed.), Lovecraft Unbound

William Faulkner, Novels 1926-1929 (Library of America omnibus)

Philip K. Dick, Five Novels of the 1960s and 1970s (Library of America omnibus)

William Jansen, Beginner’s Basque

Stephen King, The Dark Tower:  The Gunslinger Born (graphic novel adaptation)

Future Plans:

N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Don DeLillo, Underworld 

Pat has written an interesting column about the “hate” he’s been noticing recently, in the context of the comments posted to his blog and those posted elsewhere.  While I often have differences of opinion with him, I think he raises some interesting points.  That doesn’t mean, however, that I agree wholeheartedly with what he says.  Far from it, actually.

Pat’s contention that “SFF fandom” seems “to be fragmented beyond repair” left me thinking, “well, duh, since there never really was a single, unified entity as such in the first place!”  There have always been people with diverse interests who interact more as tangents or secants than as anything more intertwined.  I would be quite worried if there were a more homogenized “fandom” out there, as the literature that the authors, some of whom come from fandom ranks, might be a bit more staid as a result.  But this hypothetical concern detracts from the real thrust of Pat’s article.

What really seems to be in play here is the notion of there being a sort of hierarchy of taste and disdain.  Every reader (and essayists/critics such as myself) has his/her “sweet spots” and blind spots.  That is understandable, as there really is no accounting for taste in so many of these matters.  In writing his article, Pat seems to have unwittingly done what he accuses others of having done, which made for a rather odd reading earlier this evening for myself.   I guess diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks is more of an ideal than a reality?

But what I found to be most intriguing is Pat’s writing about his readers and those vociferous few who want him to review X but not Y.  I’m sure much of that comes with the territory of having a relatively large blog readership, but some of it is rather odd.  Not saying that Pat can’t choose what he wants to focus on, but rather that he feels compelled to write about it in such detail.  I know there have been shifts here when I decided to blog more about what interested me than blogging about the “next big thing” almost exclusively.  Doubtless, some readers stopped visiting regularly.  But new readers discovered what I was doing and liked it.  I suspect much the same is going on over there at his place and perhaps all he needs to do is just keep at it and stop worrying about the wannabe cooks trying to add to the stew?

Since I’m still absorbed in trying to do work-work, I guess I could just ask people here to weigh in on the “positivity” elements in that article and perhaps also things liked/disliked about blogs such as mine or his?  Not that I’m going to pay much heed to anyone who hates what I’m doing now, of course, but I think it’ll be amusing to see what would happen if I started to review almost-all non-spec fic works for a while, just for a change of pace…would you follow that?

Due to the growing length of this interview, David and I decided it would be best to divide it into two parts, with the second part appearing in the next few days.  

A couple of years ago, you were interviewed by several bloggers at Pat’s site, including myself.  What important things have happened in your professional and personal life between the publication of Acacia: The War with the Mein and The Other Lands?

Lots of stuff, mostly good. Acacia: The War With The Mein performed rather nicely. I was very happy with the reviews it received and with the overseas attention and publications. It got me nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer twice, and the second time I won it!

As important as any of that is that I’ve been overwhelmingly pleased by my acceptance into the community of science fiction and fantasy writers. When I walk into a convention now I know I’m among friends. Also, I’m part of a group of sff writers from around the world that daily shares information and exchanges ideas and stories about publishing. I’ve been asked to do several anthologies and collaborations – most of which I’ve had to turn down – and I’ve had the pleasure of accepting George RR Martin’s invitation to write for his Wild Cards series, which I’m doing right now.

All things considered, it’s been a good couple of years professionally.

Very cool news!  I’m curious about this group of sff writers of which you are a member.  Can you divulge any information on what that group does – is it more of an informal manuscript peer review, support group, or all that and a bag of chips more?

Oh, the group isn’t exactly a secret, but we don’t really advertize ourselves either. It’s sort of quiet, self-regulating group. Every now and then we invite new folks in, not as if we’re trying to be elite or something, but just with an eye toward keeping the group supportive and diverse and low-key. Once in, we’re just sort of an extended group of friends and peers to call on when we need to. We talk publishing biz stuff. We ask questions as we make publishing decisions or just want to get other perspectives. It’s great to see what other writer’s experiences are, and to have folks to talk to other than our editors and agents. For me in particular it’s eye opening in terms of issues specific to sf genres. It’s a good group.

Interesting.  So this is as much of a social support group as it is a writing workshop one?  Also, have you been involved in such groups for all of your professional writing career or have there been shifts in how you approach the writing craft and the sharing of written material with other writers?

It’s not really a writing workshop group at all. I’d say social support group describes it.

I’ve not been involved in anything remotely like it before. This genre nurtures more networking and interaction than the “literary” genre does. There’s certainly plenty of friction between factions in sf, but there’s supportive communication too.

In terms of sharing work with other writers… I still don’t do that much. I had a few people read Acacia: The War With The Mein during the revision period, and a few read The Other Lands. Mostly I work alone, and then bring my wife, agent and editor in.

That said, I have floated my stories for Wild Cards out to a few of the other people working on the series, and I’ve read pieces from others as well. And one prominent author recently asked me to read an early draft of the first novel of in a new series. So I guess sharing is becoming more and more a part of my writing life.

Whenever I read your blog, one of the things I notice most is how close-knit your family is.  How much of an influence has your family been on the characters and settings of your novels?

Quite a bit, actually. It would be hard for me to explain just how, though, since they get into my writing in bits and pieces, in fragments that probably only make sense to me. For example, the Akaran children are based on the template of my wife’s family, but once the template was set the characters began to evolve different. Sometimes Mena is my wife; sometimes she’s more inspired by my daughter; much of the time she’s neither. A character like Melio is named after one of our cats, a fact that brings my kids fits of laughter every time I mention something heroic the character did.

Other things I only understand afterwards, like that in writing about the relationship between Mena and Elya in the second book I was sort of writing about the relationship between my daughter and another one of our cats, Dolphin. Go figure.

My family affects everything I write. How could they not?

Since your family takes such an active role in influencing the characters, have there ever been times that one of them has been tempted to throw something at you because they saw themselves reflected in one of the characters?

For a while I lived in fear of that. It’s most obvious with the Akarans. Aliver was based on my brother in law, and look what happened to him! And Corinn began as my sister in law, and you know how she turned out… I’m happy to say they took it all in good humor, though. The truth is that from the moment the characters first open their mouths and start moving around the Acacia stage they become something different than any of the real life people that inspired them. My family understands that. Lucky for me.

Every now and then, there’s some comment or assertion on some blog or article about how there’s some discernable difference between “mainstream,” “literary,” or “mimetic” fiction and “speculative” or “SF/Fantasy” fiction.  As an author who has had stories marketed in both categories, what differences, if any, do you believe exist between these perceived narrative modes?

There are differences. Sure. There are commonalities too. I tend to think we make too big a fuss over differences, though. People stake out their turf and take too much self-righteous glee in lobbing insults onto other people’s turf. To me this is kinda silly. Kinda childish.

Here’s what I believe about “literary” and “mainstream” fiction – just today’s selection of thoughts.

I believe that there is value in writing and reading purely for entertainment, but I also believe fiction can offer more than that and that when it does it’s often harder to access without effort.

I believe that literary fiction by its nature intends to speak meaningfully about the human experience, but I also believe literary writers have no monopoly on this and that they often wear blinders that stop them from seeing quality work in other genres.

I believe that genre fiction has its roots deeply in long-standing traditions of storytelling, sometimes reaching right back to the classics, but I also believe a lot genre writing is uninventive and boring.

I believe that literary fiction’s goals are admirable, but that it’s often… uninventive, boring, safe and lacking ambition.

Looking at my own work, I’ve heard many responses that make it clear genre readers have appreciated my literary attention to character psychology, language, complexity of detail in social and political landscape, but I’m also aware that my writing seems to short circus some readers that don’t connect with any of those things at all.

Some genre readers seem to choose not to like a book when the book fails to be what they expected it to be, when the story or characters aren’t just like the last book that they really loved. That’s a perfectly valid reaction, but I don’t think it should necessarily lead one to conclude that a book is bad – or that literary is just boring. That book may just be different. The author’s interests may be different. Not all readers may share those interests, but some readers give up before they’ve engaged enough to know.

And that’s where I think there is a difference between mainstream and literary that matters. Mainstream writing by its very nature should be easy to swallow. It should go down smooth, without challenging a reader too much – or by challenging them in the ways they expect to be challenged. To take another example, McDonald’s isn’t a massive chain because they make the best tasting hamburgers in the world. They’re massive because they’ve managed to find the right formula for delivering consistently familiar food, food that never surprises and… never fails to be what you expect when you walk in the door. That’s a rather remarkable achievement, and I do think similar impulses drive book buying in the genres as well. Why not return to authors, stories, plot twists that have worked before, rendered in language that doesn’t get in the way?

Literary fiction often begins with a different premise. It may require that a reader learn to read it. Even if you’ve bought a hamburger of a novel, it’s hopefully a different cut of meat. Your first bite isn’t just like the first bite of every Big Mac you’ve ever tasted. You might have to chew for a while to know what it actually tastes like – and then to figure out if you like it.

That’s probably a lot easier an experience to go through with a hamburger than with a novel, but I think there’s a parallel. Some genre readers are turned off by literary fiction before they’ve chewed on it long enough. And, to be fair, I think that many literary readers ignore that the genres do have lots of complexity within them, many titles that they’d love if only they had the sense to give them a try. I’d say one has to learn to read Octavia Butler or Neil Gaiman or Kelly Lynch. They’re literary. They’re also fun to read regardless, but I think they get better the more you digest them.

I’ll never forget an early review of my first novel, Gabriel’s Story, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The reviewer found the language of the first part strange, convoluted and a bit hard to figure out. But then he wrote that by the second part the language had started to work to “greater effect”, and by the end he loved the book! He seems to have walked away thinking that the first part wasn’t as good as the following three parts. But I’d argue that the writing was consistent. What changed was that it took him that first part to get into the rhythm of my writing. After he did, everything got smoother and smoother for him.

Now, if I’d started the book with simpler language he might have been happier from the start, but if I’d done that I wouldn’t have been using the language that he’d learned to love by the end. I think that’s often the case with good literary fiction. (And I do mean the “good” stuff; I’m not saying that all literary fiction is.) Hopefully, it holds you from the start, but in a great many ways full appreciation of it comes gradually.

Nice presentation of the literary/genre presumed divide there.  You raise an interesting point about how your first novel was received.  Would it be fair to say that for those who read Acacia: The War with the Mein and struggled with the first section before finding themselves enjoying the rest of the book might have had a similar experience to that review of Gabriel’s Story?

Before I delve into that, I should make it clear that I don’t believe a writer has an elevated authority in terms of judging how readers respond to them. We think about it and can have opinions, but I don’t think we can determine exactly what any reader is or isn’t experiencing. The whole process is about offering stories to people. It’s the offering that counts, and once you do that you loose control over how others interact with your stories. That’s the way it should be.

With that caveat out there, do I imagine that some Acacia readers had the same experience as that Gabriel’s Story reviewer? Sure. And I thank them for sticking with it! I hope my novels are enjoyable to many people, but they do require some effort on the reader’s part. Most of the people that read Acacia were new to my work. It makes sense that some would need to get used to my approach. I’m just thankful they did.

When someone comes up to me and says they were hooked right from page one I’m always a little surprised. Really? From page one, huh? I’m proud of everything I’ve written, but I don’t think that hooking readers quickly is one of my strengths. I try to get readers chewing on an entire mouthful of baited hooks without really feeling any of those hooks too obviously. I don’t rush to yank too soon, either. I’d like to think it happens gradually, that it grows on readers so that they never know the exact moment when the hooks start sinking in.

Anyway, that’s my approach. It must be natural to me because even in novels that begin in mid-action, like Walk Through Darkness, I still don’t reveal the main hooks controlling the story until near the end.

Have there ever been times that a reader or reviewer comment has led you to reevaluate your approach, perhaps even add an element or two in order to “clarify” a point that may have been more confusing for readers (I’m particularly thinking of Acacia here) who were not used to your narrative approach?

Things that readers/reviewers say may plant seeds that effect decisions I make in the next book, but I’m not sure I’d be able to pinpoint what comment effected things I did a year later. It just gets in the mix somehow. On one hand, I make decisions consciously and I believe in them, but I also know that the whole thing is about communicating stories and ideas with people. I’d be a fool if I didn’t keep an ear open and stay willing to respond to readers.

Multiculturalism in literature of all sorts has become more prevalent in the past two decades.  However, in certain fields, epic fantasy being one of them, there seems to be some controversy over how certain characters are portrayed and if the imagined secondary worlds are a bit too homogenous.  What is your take on the arguments on this issue, including the so-called “Racefail ‘09″ debates online?

I can’t speak about Racefail ’09 specifically. I didn’t participate in it, and, though I know some of the details, I’m no expert on what went on. What’s my take on this issue in general? Again, I offer the thoughts as I have them today…

I think it’s part of the record that a lot of fantasy and sf has been laughably white.

I think it’s a bit silly when depictions of humanity in the future 1) are basically white, or 2) are diverse in ways that mirror our contemporary notions of what diversity is. The first is embarrassing because the majority of the human population isn’t white (not even right now), and unless all these folks have been killed off in some way they’re going to be in the future in ever larger numbers. The second is embarrassing because it’s so limited and shortsighted. I think it’s much more reasonable to imagine a browning of humanity that means it will be harder and harder to find people that have kept the bloodlines undiluted (and lacking the benefits of genetic diversity).

I believe that in fantasy there is something insidious about creating an entire world peopled only with variations of white people: humans, elves, dwarves, etc. I’m not moaning about it. I’m just saying that intentionally or not writers that have done that are revealing things about they way the perceive – or don’t perceive – people of color.

But I also see growing diversity in fantasy. I think it’s always been there in the readership – although not necessarily visible in the folks that make up fandom – and I see it in people’s work and in the small, growing population of writers of color that are striving to get into the field. That’s progress. It should be acknowledged and encouraged – partially because it’s just a good thing, and partially because it can only make the genre more interesting. It doesn’t mean the issue is resolved, though.

There are layers upon layers of issues built into our racial perceptions and interactions. This is one thing I think white people often view differently than people of color. (I’m very aware that I’m speaking in generalities. Such things aren’t perfect, I know.) I think it’s easier for a white person to point at a few authors or books and say, “Look, there’s proof that there’s diversity. Case closed. Can we please stop talking about it?” Whereas a person of color is more likely to say, “Yeah, you can name five black sf authors now, but let’s look at what they’ve written, how they’ve been marketed and received, how that compares to how white writers of similar material were treated, etc. And, yes, there may be other races in lots of new fantasy series, but let’s look at how they’re depicted, how central their roles are, how much they embody earthly stereotypes, and let’s consider that there’s something wrong when the people in the book are all brown and the people on the cover are all white, etc. And perhaps you can stop talking about it, but that’s because it doesn’t matter to you the same way it does to me. I have no choice but to keep talking, because stopping would mean I was failing to acknowledge and express things that I think, feel, experience every day.”

As with everything to do with race and culture and social history, there aren’t any easy answers. And when there are advances it doesn’t close the matter; it just opens up further avenues that need exploring/debating. I do wish the debating didn’t get so hostile so quickly, though. From a distance, that’s one of the things that seem problematic with episodes like Racefail ’09.

In general, we can all do better. I had a friend over from Scotland a few weeks back. White guy. He’d been talking about how much he liked District 9, which I haven’t seen. As I looked up stuff about it online I came across Tananarive Due and some other writers of color talking about depictions of race in it. Some were highly critical; others supportive of the film, etc. I showed them to my friend. He came away from reading them and said, “Well, I don’t exactly agree that it’s racist in the ways some of these authors think it is, but, still, it does get me thinking about some things I hadn’t before.”

To me, that’s perfect. Couldn’t ask for more. I wish more folks could listen to people they don’t agree with like that – with a mind open enough so that the dialogue broadens their perspective in some way, even if it’s in ways lateral to the point being argued. 

Good points.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t part of the problem many PoC writers and readers have is with “diversity” in writing that consists of having a shallow, token non-caucasian appear in a limited, or rather limiting roles?  In what ways have your stories shown a substantive difference in approach toward addressing the issue of representing PoC characters, concerns, and situations that might differ from how a caucasian writer might represent them?

Yes to the first question. Often when white writers included PoC they’re there as part of the gang around the main characters, in support roles. I’m sure those writers feel that they’ve been inclusive by doing that, but being on the margins of the story doesn’t help if the PoC characters are always at the margins. That’s not true engagement.

White writers having true engagement with non-white protagonists is rare. Richard K Morgan does it. I love it that Neil Gaiman has had lots of diverse characters in supporting roles in his books and stories, and that he made a black Caribbean character the primary in Anansi Boys. Neil delivers. He also made the decision to have Lenny Henry read the audio version of that book. You could say that’s just because the main character has a different personality than Neil, but that’s only part of it. We all know Neil’s an awesome reader. I’m sure he chose Lenny because he wanted a black voice narrating his story about a black character. If he’d tried that with his own voice the identity would’ve blended with Neil’s, and that would be diluting the effect of his narrative choices.

And that happens a lot too. Writers like Ursula K LeGuin have explicitly written about worlds filled with brown skinned characters, only to then see their publishers or filmmakers present those characters as white on the covers of their books. This is partially a subconscious thing – the ones making the artistic decisions kinda forget that the characters were described as brown-skinned. And I know it’s partially intentional – that publishers believe they’re more likely to sell less books with a PoC on the cover.

Readers may scoff at that. “I don’t think about the color of the person on the book!” I can’t argue with an individual on what they do or don’t consider. I’ll just say that it’s a fact that publishers consider race and prejudice as they make marketing decisions in which race and prejudice may play a part. You may not think you think about it; they’re sure that at some level – even subconscious – you do.

In terms of my own writing, the most direct ways I’ve approached race differently can be seen in my earlier novels. Gabriel’s Story was a response to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. I loved that book, but I hated the way the one black character in it was called “the nigger”. He was as much a part of the group as any of them, but his marginalization had it’s own nasty character to it. So I wrote a Western that began with a solid historical fact – that there were many black settlers in the West, especially after the Civil War – and ran with it. I made the black characters the central focus. I’m not aware of a white writer ever having done that.

Walk Through Darkness is as a runaway slave story, but an entire half of the book is focused on a white character, the one who I’d argue is the real main character of the book. It was an exploration of how intermingled the American bloodline is, how much that’s been subverted, and how freeing it can/could be to acknowledge it more directly. I choose to include it because I think it’s an important aspect of the American experience and because the story is in my blood, in my family history.

In my Hannibal novel, Pride of Carthage, I wanted to translate what ancient sources and what modern historians tell us about the Second Punic War into fiction. That meant making decisions, choosing between alternative possibilities, condensing and splicing things, but it was all in an effort to get that epic conflict on the page. I also wanted to pay tribute to the diversity that was the ancient Mediterranean. That’s part of why there was such a wide cast of characters: Carthaginians and Romans, Greeks and Macedonians, Gauls and Celts, and Libyans and Numidian. They all featured in the war; they all feature in my novel – not just as walk on characters in the background, but with devoted scenes specifically telling their stories. I’ve read a few fictional takes on the Second Punic War, but none of them made central characters out of North Africans other than the Carthaginians. I did. It felt important – and natural – to do that.

With Acacia: The War With The Mein I just wanted to write a large fantasy story set in a racially diverse world. I didn’t center the story around Northern European-like cultures or around sub-Saharan African ones. I went for placing it in between, and then casting a wide net around that. Once that was in place I just proceeded with the story I wanted to tell.

 How have reader reactions been to your decisions in your novels, especially in Acacia: The War with the Mein, to include so many different ethnic groups that have their traditions and which aren’t shallow riffs on the dwarves/elves/orcs that you noted above?

Nobody’s complained about it. Nobody’s said, “I’m so disappointed. Where are the elves?”

Readers of color and folks interested in PoC have quite welcomed it, who seem to feel that the combination of a writer of color creating a multi-cultural world is a very good thing. I’m happy about that. On the other hand other readers have said, “What’s the big deal? It doesn’t feel that different.” Different readers; different reactions.

I believe that only part of the way an individual perceives a story is shaped by the written words themselves. Those words mix with whatever perceptions/perspectives/prejudices the reader carries with them. That’s the magic of it, but it means that not everyone reads the same thing the same way, especially when ethnicity is one of the issues at hand. When I read Earthsea I’m jolted each time Ged and most other people are physically described as dark, coppered, brown. Each time that rings in my head like a little bell, reminding me that this is a world of PoC characters. It’s so very there in the text, and I think readers who match those descriptions themselves latch on to the ethnicity of the characters – as LeGuin wants us to do. But I’ve also spoken with a lot of white readers that look at me funny when I point this out. They don’t notice it the same way. To them those descriptions don’t stick, or don’t seem to mean the same things.

The same is true in Acacia. Again and again, I mention that the Acacian’s are of a light brown complexion, that they tend to have brown eyes and dark hair, that feminine beauty is typically round featured in the face. By contrast, the Meins are the ones that have really blond hair and fair skin and sharp features. The Talayans are very dark-skinned.

Still, though, a lot of readers sort of slide the Acacians to the European realm. I’ve seen this in the artwork for some of my European covers. I’ve certainly seen it in the names of actors people come up with to fit roles in the film. I think the tricky thing is that secondary world fantasy has been Euro-centric for so long that it’s become the default picture people have in their minds. Subtle changes to that template don’t always register.

On the other hand, complete shifts, like what Charles R. Saunders attempted with Imaro, truly resets the template. He wrote African-based sword and sorcery. No mistaken that. Problem is that few people read it. Sales dove. The series got cancelled. They tried this twice, by the way, and the same thing happened both times.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.  Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.  In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose around the alabaster spire known as the White Tower.  The wind was not the beginning.  There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.  But it was a beginning.


The wind twisted around the magnificent Tower, brushing perfectly fitted stones and flapping majestic banners.  The structure was somehow both graceful and powerful at the same time; a metaphor, perhaps, for those who had inhabited it for over three thousand years.  Few looking upon the Tower would guess that at its heart, it had been both broken and corrupted.  Separately.  (p. 49)

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series has been one of the most sprawling, character-intensive epic fantasies of the past twenty years.  Spanning millions of words, this series, now reaching its twelfth volume out of a planned fourteen, has spawned dozens of fansites over the years, as well as engendering heated debates over matters ranging from how well (or not) the author managed to portray female characters to questions of character identities and motivations to even a fictional murder-mystery that still remains unresolved seven volumes after its occurrence.  Some view passages, such as the (in)famous “wind passage” that opens the first chapter of each book, as being hallmarks of a great talent.  Others read the same lines and wonder how the story ever managed to become even more turgid and bloated than the previous volume. 

Debates such as these point to some intrinsic quality of the series that barely allows for there to be a middle ground.  There is something for almost everyone, depending if one likes an action/adventure tale, political intrigue, social commentary, or even elements of a puzzle novel.  Sometimes, there is too much of it all, and readers who enjoyed the earlier volumes might end up finding the past few volumes to be rather plodding, tedious affairs.  After reading the eighth and ninth volumes, The Path of Daggers and Winter’s Heart, I found myself going years before even thinking of picking up the tenth volume, Crossroads of Twilight, which was perhaps the most difficult book to complete reading of them all at the time.

But then a tragic event happened.  Jim Rigney, the person behind the Robert Jordan pseudonym, contracted a rare blood disorder, amyloidosis.  Rigney spent the final eighteen months of his life battling the disease, while attempting to complete the conclusion to the series.  Sadly, he succumbed to the disease on September 16, 2007.  Fans were devastated, as for nearly three months, the matter of who would complete the series, or even if the series would be completed, was up in the air.  Toward the end of the year, Rigney’s wife, Harriet McDougal, announced that she had chosen young author Brandon Sanderson, whose work to date had been three adult fantasies (Elantris and the first two Mistborn novels) and two young adult novels.  From the end of 2007 to now, Wheel of Time fans have been probing for information, trying to decide if Sanderson was the “right” choice, if he would manage to capture Jordan’s narrative “voice,” warts and all, and if the conclusion (now announced to comprise of three volumes spread out over three years) would be worthy of the time invested in the series.

Depending on what you enjoy most about the series, Sanderson largely succeeds in this thankless task.  For those wanting to know if Sanderson would manage to capture the essence of the late Jordan’s writing style or if his passages would integrate well with the ones Jordan had completed before his death, it will be difficult for most of the time to discern which author wrote which passage.  Sanderson’s interpretations of the two main characters of this story, Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, and Egwene al’Vere, the rebel Amyrlin, are almost pitch-perfect.  What I found interesting about Sanderson’s treatment of the characters is just how well they are integrated with Jordan’s earlier development of them.

Rand in particular has a very good character development arc in The Gathering Storm.  Hurting from his myriad mental, emotional, and physical wounds, he is a near-complete wreck.  Increasingly paranoid and worried that he is not “hard enough” to face the Dark One in the prophesied Last Battle, Rand’s character displays many traits in common with soldiers suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder during the Vietnam War.  This is no accident, as before his death, Rigney discussed how he himself faced a decision in Vietnam if he was to desensitize himself to the horrors happening around him or if he would fight to keep from becoming a sociopathic killer.  Rand’s development from the first chapter, “Tears from Steel,” to the last, “Just Another Man,” is one of the more intriguing in the entire series.  It is perhaps for me the most personal of all the mini-plots in this mammoth series and the authors do such a good job of showing Rand’s descent into darkness, both figurative and literal, as well as setting up the decision he makes at the end of this book that is in many ways as important thematically as the cleansing of saidin was in Winter’s Heart.

Paralleling Rand’s development and his struggles to integrate his past and present memories is that of his childhood sweetheart, Egwene.  Captured at the end of Crossroads of Twilight and forced to undergo numerous punishments at the hand of her rival for the head of the Aes Sedai organization, Elaida, Egwene presents a clear contrast to Rand’s choices early in the novel.  Instead of trying to harden herself by means of shutting out friends and even one’s own emotions, Egwene comes to accept her situation, viewing matters such as hurt and grief not as something to avoid or to manipulate, but rather as things to accept and to use to improve one’s self.  This change from the rather ambitious, self-righteous girl of the earlier volumes into a leader who realizes the importance behind the very name of “Aes Sedai,” stands in sharp opposition to that of Elaida, as the authors go to great lengths to make clear in the second chapter, “The Nature of Pain.”

There are even more parallels between the characters along the lines of examining the choices people make in regards to themselves and others.  It is debatable whether or not Jordan would have been quite as direct as the final draft came to be, but several times over the course of the novel, characters ranging from the two mentioned above, Perrin, Mat, and members of the Black Ajah and the Forsaken are shown via the choices they have made.  The selflessness of one clashes with the self-centered greed of another.  The desire to be viewed as being important contrasts with one who humbles herself, placing her own soul in risk of eternal perdition so the machinations of others can be revealed to others.  These parallels, which were either lacking or were not adroitly done in the past several volumes, helped make The Gathering Storm one of the better WoT volumes I have read in the past twelve years.

Despite this, there were several problems that I had with the text.  Although Sanderson eschewed the character “blocks” that Jordan used in the past few volumes, there were times that the pacing of the plot still suffered.  While Rand and Egwene’s subplots were developed well and each concluded within narrative minutes of one another, Perrin and Mat’s were underdeveloped and appear to be days or even weeks behind the first two.  In addition, their characters were not as well developed as were Rand’s and Egwene’s.  Perhaps this is in part due to the limited number of chapters each appears, but Mat’s chapters, despite a near-horrific chapter occurring in a backwoods town near the kingdom of Andor, felt rather sketchy, as if Sanderson had not decided what to do with the character in the allotted space.  Perrin’s arc was rather anti-climatic and it is hard to guess where he will be heading in the next volume.  Despite the near-certain protests from fans of those characters, The Gathering Storm might have been better served if those arcs had been withheld until the next volume, even though that alternative certainly would have risked backlash from those burned by the eighth and tenth volumes of the series.

The pacing was mostly good, although there were times that events long foretold in the series unfolded so quickly that there was a sense of a letdown.  But perhaps reader expectations had been built up too much from the narrative molehills, so it is hard to say particularly which events (ranging from what occurred outside a castle in Arad Doman to the use of a certain item discovered in The Shadow Rising) were done too hastily and which events were done purposely at such a breakneck pace in order to set up future character development.  For myself, the two events I allude to above served to develop Rand’s character in ways that were at once surprising and logical in hindsight (especially as it relates to how he parallels Moridin more and more now in thought and action).  But others might view these scenes differently, wishing that Sanderson had spent more time setting up the events so that there would be a stronger emotional reaction.  There is something to be said for this argument, but I suspect if there had been further development of these two set scenes, the pace of the narrative would have slowed to the near-glacial creep of the previous novels.

Prose is something I value highly in a novel.  The previous eleven volumes of the WoT series were uneven to me, as powerful scenes would be offset by descriptions of clothing, of how to wash silk, and even lengthy scenes set in a bathtub.  Sanderson’s prose in his novels tends to be rather too sparse at times, attempting to be too “invisible” when the occasional use of more florid language might serve to vary the prose enough to make it more interesting.  Thankfully, for most of The Gathering Storm, Sanderson managed to achieve a happy medium between his own preferred style and that employed by Jordan.  There are places where the narrative still feels clunky or choppy, but these are fewer than what I recall being present in Sanderson’s own work.  The too-long descriptions of places and dress still occur on occasion, but thankfully they are reduced.  The male characters’ self-conscious thoughts about their abilities with women is also much reduced, doubtless to the delight of numerous readers.  While certainly not written in a style that would lend itself to being studied by writing students, the prose here was at least acceptable and at several times, very well-written.

The Gathering Storm certainly is not an ideal beginning place for readers curious about the Wheel of Time universe, but for those who were disenchanted by the perceived lack of plot and character development over the past few volumes, it certainly is one of the faster-paced, better-written volumes.  While I would not consider it to be among the best works released in 2009, it certainly is one of the best epic fantasies that I have read.  The Wheel continues to turn and thankfully it appears to be cranking a bit faster and toward a more intriguing conclusion than I had suspected when I had suspended my reading of the series back in 2000. Highly recommended for WoT fans and recommended for those who might have become disillusioned by the previous four volumes.

Here are 16 out of the 23 books I bought today at my favorite local used bookstore (well, actually I traded in about 35 hardcovers, tradebacks, and MMPBs of books I had no interest in reading and which I had had in my possession for about a year or two for almost $200), with the other seven being a second copy of a book I own (for a gift to another), five grammars (Basque, Romanian, French, German, American Sign Language) and one mathematics book for my students.  Still have almost $80 in store credit remaining.  I love McKay’s Used Books and CDs, obviously.

It is little accident that I have fewer works of speculative fiction pictured here than what some might expect.  Oftentimes, when I’m purchasing books, I spend much more time in the “General Fiction” or “Literature” sections than I do in the “Fantasy” or “Science Fiction” sections.  My interests are much broader than I sometimes reveal here (and sometimes I wonder if I need to establish contacts with the publishing firms’ non-SF imprints, so I can be broader in my coverage of newer books).  Perhaps one day I’ll update my pictures of my non-English languages books (nearing 300 books now, not counting the grammars, which must be near two dozen).

Of course, the best part of making posts like these are not just letting people who are curious know what I buy when in a physical bookstore, but also in perhaps sparking curiosity to the point where others go and investigate books such as these.

So, out of these books, which look the most interesting and why?

I guess if I want to get more reader participation (well, outside of those where a few delete their cookies and vote multiple times in order to sway a choice), I’ll have to run more polls in the future featuring rabid squirrels, since that poll was among the most-participated of any that I’ve run over the past year or so.

Still extremely busy with lots of things in my personal and professional life (much more so than I thought I’d be at this point, but the former seems to be resolving itself somewhat at least and the latter is apparently always going to be in flux), so not as many updates and reviews as I would have wished.  But since this week will see the World Fantasy Convention begin in San Jose, California, I thought at the very least I could run a speculative poll as to which novel will win the Best Novel award (the other categories are stacked, but I suspect those don’t hold as much interest for many readers here).

So, for those of you who only read this blog via RSS feeds, you might want to visit here directly and make your voice heard…or something.