The female authored boy’s books

Yeah, remember that beautiful review some serious newspaper lady spouted about GRRM’s A song of ice and fire? Possibly it was about the tv series, specifically. Anyway. The verdict was that this was a boy’s fantasy with maybe some nipples thrown in to please the female audience.

And, you know, response, crankypants, mumble grumble, yada yada. Anyway.

I happened to read a lot of books by female authors this year, and it wasn’t a conscious decision or anything. They were just the books I wanted to read, and they happened to have lady-names on them. It happens! And a lot of them were good, too.  Here’s my list of 2011 ladies with appropriate commentary:

Octavia E. Butler

In this beautiful kindle age… I had to go to the local nerd book shop and make them order the Lilith’s brood-collection for me. Indeed.  Then it turned out to look a bit like common housewife erotica on the cover.  I had doubts.

Doubts unfounded; this was a very good reading experience, and I wish I didn’t have to go through the same trouble to get my paws on the parable-books. Lilith’s story was a pretty classic “getting along with the aliens”-story, but told from something other than the usual hero’s point of view.   

I read these while completely immobilized by a week long spinal tap headache and there may have been morphine involved. Still, neat books.

Lois McMaster Bujold

I think it started with the nomination of Cryoburn for the Hugo Award. It being the most recent chapter of the already epic - and multiple-times-Hugo-award-winning - Vorkosigan Saga,  I decided, well, to read it all.  Yes.   It started in 2010, and was easily finished sometime this August. 

There are many genres tucked inside these inconspicuously pulpy-looking novels. There is some girly romance, but a lot less than there is military science fiction and, maybe my personal favourite, random spouts of futuristic medical tech stuff. Still, Bujold writes about life with  this technology,  and less about blah blah this technology is very shiny.   (I love my hard SF, but this works for me, too.)

I read the books in their internal chronology, which is not the same as the order in which they were published. For the first few books this makes a jumbled experience, as you hop around in something like ten years of author style-development and character integrity.    Some of these books are pulpy.  Some of them are much, much, much better than I ever would have expected, and I blubbered happily at the end of Cryoburn.

As a whispered aside; let’s pretend I have my prejudiced moments. Let’s pretend I once looked up from browsing amazon and uttered something like “Science fiction or fantasy that comes highly recommended by women? THY NAME IS PORN.”   How silly and desperately accurate of me.   Anyway,  the point;  Bujold breaks this rule. There is no porn as far as the eye can see.  Just thought you might like to know.

Margaret Atwood

This was the year I decided to read Oryx and crake and the following Year of the flood.   I’m not sure I have much of an opinion. They’re not the most engaging post apocalypses I’ve read, but considering the fact that these are camouflaged SF-books living undercover in the glory of the litfic section,  they are very popular post apocalypses.  A lot of people read and praise these and still think to themselves “Oh, that sciencey fictioney stuff, I can’t be having with that, no sir”. 

Which is funny.

I think Atwood is alright - my only other experience is The handmaid’s tale - and her tone - or style - is deliciously stark, at times.  These books won many cookie points from me due to the biology-alteration-tech-theme, of course, but…   I keep writing things here and ending it with “but…”,   I dunno. She’s not a favourite of mine, but I’ll pay attention to what she comes up with next.

Mira Grant

Dear Mira Grant.  I’m sorry I was hesitant. I’m sorry I thought your books were some sort of second-rate YA dystopias.  I’m glad I like YA dystopias enough to pick up Feed anyway,  because,  Mira Grant, you’ve written the zombie tale OF MY DREAMS. 

Thank you for Feed,  Deadline and the novellas Countdown and The box.   For filling them up with less eating-of-brains and more how-and-why.   All of those pages describing the viruses, the mutation, the contagion, the everyday security precautions, the politics:  I love it all.  I want more. Immediately.

(An acquaintance asked why on earth I would be so focused on the why in a zombie tale. I didn’t even realise there could be any other focus. I always want to know why.)

N.K. Jemisin

The Inheritance trilogy:  A hundred thousand kingdoms,  The broken kingdoms, and The kingdom of gods. 

So I picked up the first of these because of the Hugo nomination and a bunch of mentions on io9.   It was a very fast read, which sometimes means there isn’t much to gain from it, and sometimes means it’s very good, and sometimes it’s neither.  I was a bit distracted by descriptions of copulating gods and subjects - random porn in a different-themed story is a bit like finding banana bubblegum in a bowl of chili - not necessarily unpleasant, but not the right place for it, either.  At least not for me. I may have allergies.    Anyway,  the first book can’t have been too off-putting, because I read the following two, aswell.   The third and concluding volume was devoured on christmas eve,  and that was when I decided I would call it good if anyone happened to ask.   Because they are good books. Jemisin builds a startlingly rich and textured little world in what feels like very short novels,   and even though I would actually prefer to read a twice-as-long novel about the governing of the kingdoms,  I can settle for this.

Connie Willis

Remember how I mentioned Margaret Atwood living the undercover life in the litfic-section?  I don’t know who to suggest it to, but I think Connie Willis should get on the same program.  It’s tricksy, thinking of her brick-sized books as science fiction.  There is the time travel element, but that’s not where the action is.  That’s not what it’s about. The focus is never the technology or even the future the time traveller’s are from. These are background detail and fuzzy framing. 

Don’t misunderstand: I love Connie Willis. Her stories are intelligent, cosy, engaging and all that stuff.  Characters I care about, problems I worry about, and so on.    I just can’t help but think about all the people who would probably very much enjoy the  Blackout / All clear tale of London and the blitz and ww2,  but they will never find it, because they wouldn’t even poke the SF-shelf with a stick.  A long stick.

In light of this, my personal favourite for this year’s Hugo was Ian McDonald’s The Dervish house, but I definitely support the Connie Willis decision.   I also read the previous Hugo winner The doomsday book this year, with all it’s gory middle-age and bubonic plague details, and loved it.  So that’s nice!

The one-offs

Some random ladies:

Catherynne M. Valente is a favourite from when I first read palimpsest. Her books are kind of like walking through the perfume section of a department store, it’s all heavy and cloying and you get kinda dizzy before you find the exit door, but in a good way.   This year I read the first volume about Prester John,  which was a little more boring than I expected, but not so much that I won’t pick up the second. You just have to be in the right mood to ooh and aah at all of the things.

Lois Lowry, the giver.  There are more books set in the same universe, but I’m not going to read them, because this, for once, has a target audience a bit younger than what I can aspire to, even while wearing my cow hat and pink kitty gown.  The story doesn’t engage.  In a way, the best thing about reading this was being able to spot how Ally Condie’s Matched seems to be set in exactly the same universe. With the same drabness issues.  I actually preferred Matched, but that may very well be an influence-of-the-decade sort of thing. It flowed better,  the way an action movie from 2011 usually looks a little less embarrassing than one from 1980.   Oops - The giver isn’t that old. At all.   Point still stands.

Barbara Ehrenreich doesn’t write SF or fantasy at all, she writes non-fiction, but as I re-read Smile or die (Or Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America) this year,  I’m mentioning her name, anyway.  Look at that book title. Tell me it doesn’t sound like excellent fuel for some good hmmph’ing and grumbling and maybe giggling. It is.   The audio book version has the added benefit of being narrated by one of my favourite voices, Kate Reading.

Grace Krilanovich wrote The orange eats creeps, a mostly incoherent slam-poetry-session which is maybe about vampires, and, I’m sorry, I think I have allergies.  Next to Greg Bear’s Hull zero three, I elect this the worst book I read this year. I’m sorry. I suffered. I wished I was the kind of person who can not finish a book once it’s started.  I ate comfort cookies.  This is what happens when you’re no longer artsy and beautiful and unique-snowflake enough to appreciate the poetry, man, like, the WORDS, man, she’s like an artist or something, man. Maaan.

Lauren Beukes wrote Moxyland and Zoo city,  both of which I highly recommend as short, sweet, action-y packages of fun.  They are!  And it’s nice to be taken to South Africa on urban fantasy adventures,  it’s nice there.  

Kate DiCamillo has been, I think, amazon’s very favourite choice for the Kindle Daily Deals.  They’ve had at least three of her novels on there.  I know, because I’ve been tricked into buying at least two of them, based on descriptions which make me go “Well, oh, it’s less than a cup of coffee would cost me, and who knows, I could at some point in time actually want to read something sort of like this”.     So I did, I read The magician’s elephant,  and it was worth the less-than-a-cup-of-coffee money, I think.   I think.   I dunno.  I will compare it to how, in the old days, among us internet-less dinosaurs,  one would sometimes sit through a random film found on a random channel on tv, not knowing its name, not recognising any of the actors, and being only barely not-bored enough to refrain from continuing the channel hopping.  You know? This book is that film.   Sometimes I miss those films.