Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Who's your fav author? I'd have to say Iain M. Banks is up there...especially his culture novels. Being able to change your biological sex just by thinking about it? Yes please!

My all time favourite authors would be Asimov and Heinlein, Herbert, Bradbury and Clarke just to name a few.  It has been along time since I was able to sit down and read, read and read.  It would be nice to sit down or lie down and read the more contemporary and science fantasy authors.

Kind regards
Sarah B

I Always had a weird thing with Asimov...loved his short stories, but could never manage his novels. Been reading a lot of William Gibson recently as well.

Guy N. Smith. Cheesy? Yes. Wierd? Yes. Entertaining? Ho yes.  ;D

Ray Mo-F'in' Bradbury up in the hizzouse.  And can I get a shout out for Philip K. Dick?

I'm sorry I spoke that way....

I'm reading a pulp sci fi series by a modern guy named Jeff Somers.  He wrote The Electric Church, The Digital Plague, and the Eternal Prison, all of which are in a series.  It's good first person narrative gun slinger in the distant future kind of stuff.  It's a bit derivative but it just oozes cool.

Orson Scott Card - his short story collection Maps in a Mirror.

I'm not a big fan of sci fi, but I like science fiction.

True geek. lol

Quote from: Rock_chick on March 19, 2010, 03:13:05 AM
True geek. lol

Why, thank you.

I used to be a big Heinlein nut. I haven't had as much time for pleasure reading as I used to--and I have great trouble reading anything at all these days--so I'm not sure I'm such a big fan anymore. But I have all of his stuff, I think, except Tramp Royale, which isn't sf.

Big fan of Ted Sturgeon--great short story writer. John Varley used to write great short works. I like James Tiptree, Jr. I still like Bob Silverberg very much. I very much enjoy a lot of Victorian-era stuff, especially H.G. Wells. I get a kick out of quite a bit of pre-WWII stuff. I'll admit that some of it is quite awful, but it's also fascinating.

Asimov and Clarke, not so much. I don't like cyberpunk, so Gibson doesn't tickle my fancy. Herbert bores me. I think Orson Scott Card is overvalued--I found Ender's Game to be merely adequate and saw no reason to continue reading the rest of the books. I haven't read much PKD yet, but it's in my pending pile.

I guess I don't read too much recent stuff (as I said, not much sf reading in the past decade or so), but I very much enjoy a lot of Connie Willis' work. I also get a bang out of reading juvenile sf. John Christopher, William Sleator, some Steven Gould, definitely Monica Hughes. I was bummed when Hughes died a little while ago; she wrote some great stuff for young people.

I have a nineteenth-century French work on my academic pile that I really ought to get to. It's pretty thick. It may be the first work ever to use a panspermia device, but I haven't found much about that topic and can't be sure. Anyway, the thing must be well over four hundred pages...pretty scary when I can barely sit still to read much of anything for any length of time. ::)

Here's another vote for Orson Scott Card! Although I strongly disagree with his political positions.

Of course Azimov and Heinlein are classics and I love them. Bradbury's probably my fav classic. What we need these days are some new sci-fi writers!!

~Jas :icon_chick:

Quote from: Jasmine.m on March 19, 2010, 08:11:20 AM
Although I strongly disagree with his political positions.

~Jas :icon_chick:

Agreed!!!

I always liked Harlan Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut though both went out of their way to say they did not write science fiction.  Ellison called what he wrote 'speculative fiction' (and isn't all fiction speculative on some level?) and Vonnegut said he wrote fiction with some science added in.  I think they felt that way because so much of what is grouped into science fiction is such poor writing, particularly on the character development level.  The science and the story overwhelm the people, and what makes any writing into literature is a deeper understanding of the human condition, which, when characters are not developed, tends to be wanting.

Science fiction? I'll take speculative fiction, thanks.

I am a huge fan of old-school cyberpunk - Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Masamune Shirow. Big fan of Katsuhiro Otomo's old work, as well - Akira, Domu and Fireball. Also, let's not forget the old-school writers: Frank Herbert, Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke.

As for politics, I'm closer to Ursula K. LeGuin's politics than Orson Scott Card's (or Heinlein's, since his libertarianism is always bandied about so much).

As for the very old-hat and stereotypical idea that most sci fi isn't "literature," whatever that means, because it's not centrally about the emotional lives of characters, that is (a) only sometimes true and (b) all a matter of what you're looking to get out of a book. Just as I don't watch a David Lynch movie hoping for a tight, compelling and fast-moving plot, I don't read hard sci-fi hoping for deep and penetrating psychological narrative. The same people who criticize the reader for being unable to wade through a "high literature" aristocratic slushfest like Anna Karenina will then turn around and criticize the writer if the work they find unappealing is from a "lowbrow" genre.

This is kind of like how many literary critics dismiss the entire medium of comics offhand, but show themselves to be both unschooled in the unique storytelling language of the medium and ignorant of its great authors, movements, styles etc. when they talk on the subject. Even those of them who have now embraced the "graphic novel" idea are not much better: they see the endless hyperbole about Maus (and more recently, Persepolis and the works of Chris Ware) and think that these are somehow special exceptions, works that have "risen above" the "constraints" of the medium. It would be nice if they knew the first thing about it. Art Spiegelman was not the first person in the history of artistkind to tell an effective, deadly serious, and heartwrenching story in the medium of comics.

Quote from: tekla on March 19, 2010, 11:42:14 AM
I always liked Harlan Ellison.

One of his stories, Sweet Wine, really stuck in my head. Those are the types of stories I like, the ones I can't forget.

Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Card (though his politics make me ill), Niven, Pohl, and Brin.

I always hated cyberpunk. It's depressing! And Herbert, for some reason, puts me to sleep.

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on March 19, 2010, 12:32:50 PM
This is kind of like how many literary critics dismiss the entire medium of comics offhand, but show themselves to be both unschooled in the unique storytelling language of the medium and ignorant of its great authors, movements, styles etc. when they talk on the subject. Even those of them who have now embraced the "graphic novel" idea are not much better: they see the endless hyperbole about Maus (and more recently, Persepolis and the works of Chris Ware) and think that these are somehow special exceptions, works that have "risen above" the "constraints" of the medium. It would be nice if they knew the first thing about it. Art Spiegelman was not the first person in the history of artistkind to tell an effective, deadly serious, and heartwrenching story in the medium of comics.

This is so true. Neil Gaiman won an award for best short fantasy story with his version of A midsummer night's dream...then following the wails of anguish and general anget, they changed the rules so a mere comic could never win again. It's the story that's important, not the medium it's told in.

Quote from: Rock_chick on March 19, 2010, 05:53:25 PM
This is so true. Neil Gaiman won an award for best short fantasy story with his version of A midsummer night's dream...then following the wails of anguish and general anget, they changed the rules so a mere comic could never win again. It's the story that's important, not the medium it's told in.

This is misleading; maybe comics can't win for short fiction, but they can win in another category. I would not call a comic book short fiction, and I doubt that most people would. I remember this flap. Gaiman's work could easily have been awarded in a different category; I know that there's a category that allows for this, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Granted, maybe they should create a separate category for comics and graphic novels, but comics can win. Just not for short fiction.

IMHO, Gaiman should stick to the comic book format. His fiction is...well, let's just say that I think his efforts are wasted in fiction and better off in comics. But lots of people would apparently disagree with me.

P.S. Considering that the WFA are awarded by genre, the medium is indeed important. Would you give an award for best novel to a short story?

Quote from: Arch on March 19, 2010, 08:01:18 PM
P.S. Considering that the WFA are awarded by genre, the medium is indeed important. Would you give an award for best novel to a short story?

I would stick my pedantic media studies head on and probably say that a short story is a stylistic approach to writing rather than describing it as a medium in the transmissive sense, and it's possible to write things that count as short stories, both in print and comic media.

Short stories do exist in comics, of course. Now, given that comics generally read more quickly than prose stories, but the shortest works tend to be very, very short (two, three or four panels), the definition of what exactly is a "short" story and what is not certainly merits investigation.

The idea that comics is a "genre" is fundamentally wrong. It is a medium - a way of communicating. I certainly understand that there are concerns about how this way of communicating fits into existing paradigms of awards recognition - is it "fiction" because it's stories printed in books, or is it not "fiction" because it's made up partially of pictures? - but the fundamental concern, for me and for other comics folks is that great comics somehow be institutionally recognized outside of the comics fandom ghetto. It's important not only that truly great works get the recognition they deserve, but that the public understands that comics is a medium, not a genre, that there is much more out there than Dragonball Z and Batman, and that if what they want isn't out there, it is well within their power to create it.

This battle for the image of comics is very important to me, because all of the media are going through upheavals right now, and we need the public to know that we as an industry can provide the content they want, and can do more than what we've always done. We need to be flexible, and we need to be able to stake out new turf as the old turf falls away under our feet.

I'll stop passionately nerding about my medium now. ;D

Quote from: Rock_chick on March 20, 2010, 12:10:24 PM
I would stick my pedantic media studies head on and probably say that a short story is a stylistic approach to writing rather than describing it as a medium in the transmissive sense, and it's possible to write things that count as short stories, both in print and comic media.

Let's argue about this; it's interesting. I'll admit that perhaps I'm being a bit, er, traditional in sticking with the traditional view of literature/fiction (i.e., it is prose), but your view of short fiction is a bit too transgressive for me.

To me, one constraint of short fiction is that it does not have the advantage of relying on any type of visual medium to convey meaning. Short fiction, as it is usually defined, has to do its job competently and well with words only. Too much description, and the story bogs down. Too much explanation of who is doing what, and the plot stalls. So writers have to be especially terse or at least economical.

Comic books can completely eliminate physical description and much explanation of the action. Comic book authors don't even have to tag their dialog because we can see who is speaking--if the art is any good, we can even see how the speaker is feeling at the moment. The author is spared the necessity of bogging down the story with such details. He or she doesn't need to display the particular skill sets that the prose-only authors must.

Not to mention that the brain responds differently to art than it does to mere print. It's not a level playing field. How can we judge this combination medium according to the same criteria as a print medium? We can't. We must allow a consideration of the artwork in this particular case, but if we do that, we judge such a work by completely different standards than we do straight prose work. It's hard enough to compare prose with prose; we do both art forms (prose and comic books) a disservice if we attempt to put them into the same category. Why shouldn't comic books be accorded the respect of having their own category?

P.S. Heh. If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps a comic book should be required to be a thousand words shorter than the maximum allowable verbiage for every picture it contains. >:-) (Okay, I don't believe that, but there should be some kind of compensating factor for the advantages of the visual component in these works.)

Well, that's my argument. Or some of it.

That's all well and good, Arch, but how are we going to get mainstream recognition for great works of comics fiction then?

I think the same constraints apply to comics as well, telling a self contained story in 20 pages is as much of an art form as writing a good short story. true you don't have the descriptive writing that is required in prose, however if you read a script for a one shot comic, you'll see that a huge amount of effort goes into panel layout and what is contained within. I'd wager that the amount of dialogue contained in a 20 page comic and a short story would probably turn out to be similar.

The medium of the two stories is very different and impose their own limitations...however, the craft required to tell a good short story is the same.

Maybe it's never going to work trying to compare comics to short stories, however as a lifelong comic fan girl, it'd be nice for people to stop dismissing the medium.

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on March 20, 2010, 04:32:46 PM
That's all well and good, Arch, but how are we going to get mainstream recognition for great works of comics fiction then?

The same way that science fiction and gay people have acquired some mainstream respect. One bird at a time. Great comic books will continue to be produced, and eventually the "mainstream" will be forced to recognize that it is a legit art form.

It's already happening. Not just with Maus (which, I should point out, has been accepted into academic circles as legitimate reading) but all over the place. We already have a distinction between comics and graphic novels; the latter category can be seen as a way of legitimizing comics. Eventually that distinction will diminish and perhaps shift or even disappear completely.

Look how many comics and graphic novels have been made into movies lately. It's not just the cheap Saturday morning serials now; it's big budget. And there's a spillover effect; movies bring some respectability to comics. Maybe not as much as people would like, because Hollywood isn't fully respectable, but money talks. Look what it did for Joe Kennedy.

And the very fact that Gaiman won a WFA in a traditionally prose-only category screams "progress!" to me. Now, if they would just get off their silly high horse and invent a new category...heck, the Hugo now has a graphic category, so it's only a matter of time.

Yes, it will take more time, but it is already happening.

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Quote from: Rock_chick on March 20, 2010, 04:41:44 PM
Maybe it's never going to work trying to compare comics to short stories, however as a lifelong comic fan girl, it'd be nice for people to stop dismissing the medium.

I really think that this is your main complaint, and I fully agree. I think that it's happening. One has only to compare the Comic-Con of yesteryear (say, twenty years ago) with the Comic-Con of today. Look at colleges and academic conferences. Look at the movies. Look at bookstores.

Significant change usually doesn't happen overnight. But it's happening--with emphasis on the "-ing."

I actually find it really funny that Maus got such celebrity status, because (as I believe I said previously) they have chosen to ignore or shine much less light on other very good and similarly serious works. Not even Joe Sacco's Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, both of which are very serious, international award-winning journalistic works about pressing life-and-death issues which are of interest to a wide range of academics, have gotten that kind of academic recognition - and Palestine has an introduction by Edward Said, the foremost name on issues of Palestinian human rights and negatively biased Western views of the Arab world. It may be simply because the academic lit crowd (IMO mistakenly) viewed Spiegelman as a trailblazer in creating "serious" comics. It seems to me, though, that he's gotten a good deal of the fame that he has simply because he's married to the New Yorker's art director, and has a lot of access to levers of power and publicity in "serious" literary circles. He also has a talent for giving self-important and ultimately uninformative lectures to crowds of educated people who know nothing about comics. I wish he'd leave that to Scott McCloud, who's much less impressed with himself and does a much better job of it besides.

Who knows, though - maybe, if I become as famous as Art Spiegelman, I'll start demanding to chain smoke onstage during lectures just like he does.

PanoramaIsland, you have a very good point. I'm already getting out of my depth in this conversation, though. Somebody started a thread on comics here...guess I'll take a look at it and see what folks have to say. I'm sure I'll learn something.

Thanks for the reference to Sacco--I'll look him up, although I doubt that I'll be able to find him at the library >:(. And I can't really justify spending much money on books till I get financially solidified.

But if his stance is pro-Palestine, that might explain why folks in this country (U.S.) aren't reading him so much. A lot of people seem to think that the Israelis are lily-white victims and the Palestinians are evil, murderous land-grubbers. I guess U.S. foreign policy has had a hand in that...not to mention the persecution of the Jews in WWII, which, of course, is largely the subject matter of Maus.

Yeah, Sacco's great. Good luck finding Palestine in a library outside of San Francisco or Berkeley, though.  ;D
As a Jew, I've gotten really tired of the old-hat Zionist perspective that most of my family takes. It's like they're progressives on every issue, but when it comes to our ethnicity, they're militaristic nationalists who believe in mixing synagogue and state and harbor a subtle, persistent ethnic hatred for Arabs - which is silly, because Arabs and Israeli Jews are so similar. It's like hatred between Arabs and Persians - kind of pointless, yes?
I'm not saying that the Palestinians are perfect, defenseless angels, mind you, but how would you feel if you were fenced in from every side, deprived of critical supplies, prevented by walls from seeing your family, had your home bulldozed (it's full of TERRORISMS!), and then a bunch of ultra-orthodox loons built a fancy settlement next door, fenced in with security towers, IDF protection and special Jews Only access roads?
Whatever you think about the origin of the conflict, it's clear that the Israeli government is not blameless.

I think that Sacco's mission was to capture the human side of things, and keep high-minded editorializing to a minimum, and he achieves that: the book (like Safe Area Goražde) is about recounting the stories of human beings embroiled in a conflict, how he meets them, what they do, the stories they tell. It's not really about analyzing or passing judgment, although he does have a certain political perspective which he doesn't exactly make secret.

His newest work, Footnotes In Gaza, I haven't read - though I hear it's quite good.

See if your library has Safe Area Goražde, at least. It's worth checking.

The comics thread seems to be largely "Marvel! DC! Yayyy!!!" so far. Leave it to the nerds, I guess. ;D

I spotted a copy of Palestine in forbidden planet the other week, may buy it when i get paid next.

Interestingly, I've always been more of a fantasy fan when it comes to reading, but generally like sci-fi movies/tv shows more than fantasy. I don't really know why, and there are some exceptions, but that holds pretty true for most things. Either way, I'm a total nerd! ;D

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on March 21, 2010, 11:25:43 AM
Yeah, Sacco's great. Good luck finding Palestine in a library outside of San Francisco or Berkeley, though.  ;D

The uni library I use here in town (my undergrad alma mater) has all of the Sacco works you mentioned, including three copies of Palestine. But I had no success finding anything at all in Barnes & Ignoble. Perhaps it was in the history section. I suppose I should have thought of it. But there are loads of copies of all of these books in the public library system. Guess I could request them and have them brought to my local branch.

Yeah, they shelves "serious" comics in other sections sometimes. Because, you know, Persepolis and Maus aren't, you know, comics. Comics have superheroes in them.  ::)

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on March 22, 2010, 12:13:22 AM
Yeah, they shelves "serious" comics in other sections sometimes. Because, you know, Persepolis and Maus aren't, you know, comics. Comics have superheroes in them.  ::)

Quite so. These are graphic novels. They're actually respectable.

I have never read Persepolis, mainly because I tend to shy away from anything that has to do with women. But I remember the TV commercials for the movie when it came out...I thought they were idiotic commercials, especially when I found out what the film was really about.

David Weber and the Honor Harrington series

Quote from: al james on April 08, 2010, 02:53:12 PM
David Weber and the Honor Harrington series

Some people swear by the HH books, but my ex, who is a big military sf buff, will not read them. I've never figured out why. Are they especially bubblegummy, or something?

To be fair t was the first series of sci fi my now partner leant me so i haven't got a lot to compare them with. I've now read the Kris Longknife series and they're about on a par but the military bit is probably dumbed down cos even i understand it

I have just re-read the 'Shadowmoon' series by Sean McMullin, and have to admit they appeal to my love of black comedy.  A bit like Flint's 'Philosphical Strangler'. 

Quote from: Rock_chick on March 13, 2010, 11:29:57 AM
Who's your fav author? I'd have to say Iain M. Banks is up there...especially his culture novels. Being able to change your biological sex just by thinking about it? Yes please!

I never get to name drop, so here goes...

I once did a literary festival with Iain Banks, we then got drunk on wine and he started doing impressions of Neil Gaiman.  I was offered to do a PHD in fantasy and sci-fi after a book reading - but I can't afford it.

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I am a big Vonnegut nut though and my favourite of his books was 'Sirens of Titan' one of his most sci-fi-y.

Michael Moorcock, P.K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin  :)

Getting into China Meivelle at the moment; just read Iron Council which was pretty great  :)

Quote from: Pica Pica on April 25, 2010, 08:37:04 AMI once did a literary festival with Iain Banks, we then got drunk on wine and he started doing impressions of Neil Gaiman. 

What mannerisms make Neil Gaiman stand out? Or should I just look him up on YouTube?

Quote from: Arch on May 06, 2010, 01:38:30 PM
What mannerisms make Neil Gaiman stand out? Or should I just look him up on YouTube?

His hotness? His interest in writing women as real people, instead of giant flying guns with boobies attached?

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on May 06, 2010, 02:46:47 PM
His hotness? His interest in writing women as real people, instead of giant flying guns with boobies attached?

I don't see how these perceived attributes make for a successful round of impressions...

Quote from: Arch on May 06, 2010, 04:10:52 PM
I don't see how these perceived attributes make for a successful round of impressions...

Yah, actually I don't know.
All you have to do for a good impression of Art Spiegelman, though, is to give a lecture about the aesthetic properties of golden era newspaper comics while being grumpy, egotistical, and chain smoking on stage. Acting slightly neurotic helps, too.

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on May 07, 2010, 01:38:34 AM
Yah, actually I don't know.
All you have to do for a good impression of Art Spiegelman, though, is to give a lecture about the aesthetic properties of golden era newspaper comics while being grumpy, egotistical, and chain smoking on stage. Acting slightly neurotic helps, too.

Yeah, I've heard all sorts of dirt about him...but I do like his Maus books.

Gaiman's prose novels don't do anything for me. I've only read two, though. A friend recommended another title, so I guess I'll look it up. I figure three strikes, you're out. And then I might give his graphic novels a try. But seriously, I rarely give an author more than two chances. I don't know why I'm bending over backward to like Gaiman's prose. I had an awful time trying to finish American Gods, and that won a Hugo, for Pete's sake.

Apparently he has a low voice and looks at the floor,with lots of odd pauses and some odd pronunciations because he sometimes sounds farmer-ish and blurts odd things out.

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Just listened to him, he doesn't have any of those attributes, odd.