Well, as you can see there are no Weekend Links this week (though there is a funny picture–I haven’t been completely cut off from the world).
My partner and I were out of town all week to take care of his dying mother in Huntsville, which has been exhausting, physically and emotionally. Between that and there just not being any reliable internet access at the Huntsville Hospital, I honestly haven’t read a thing. I did think about trying to rush and put something together, but after coming home yesterday to find the beautiful tree outside my apartment cut down and my view (such as it was) completely destroyed–like, the new aesthetic here is apparently “edge of a stripmine”–I frankly don’t have the energy to do it.
My plan right now is that I will be watching and tweeting Game of Thrones tonight as normal. I usually do my recap/review posts on the Monday following the episode, but tomorrow is a holiday and we will be going to my grandmother’s house, which will take up a good part of the day. I am hoping to still get the post out as usual, though probably late in the afternoon or evening, but it may have to wait until Tuesday. As far as the rest of the week goes, we aren’t planning on heading back to Huntsville for a couple of weeks, so I’m hoping to keep things as normal as possible in the meantime.
The good news is that, while I didn’t have time to read the internet this past week, I did read several books, and I’m planning to finish another one or two by the end of the week, so there should be a whole bunch of book reviews coming soon. I’ll also be working this week to get back on track with my Dune readalong. In addition to that, I have several other posts and essays in the works, and the Hugo Voter’s Packet is finally available so I can start figuring out what I’m going to do with that. I’d originally planned to blog my way through it, but I don’t know that I’ll have the emotional fortitude to deal with it at this point.
Obviously, all of this is going to be (unfortunately) very conditional on how my partner’s mom does over the coming days and weeks. I think his next visit to Huntsville is going to be made alone, but I will surely be joining him at times as well if his mother lingers on and of course when she does finally pass, which could be right now or six months from now.
As I said above, I’m otherwise going to just do my best to run things as normally as possible here as we get into summer. Even just a day of being home, relaxing and eating food that isn’t from McDonalds has worked wonders, so I fully expect to get back up to speed this week.
Well, it’s been another rough week, with a lot of emotional energy spent dealing with the news that my partner’s mom is sick and trying to figure out what he/we need to do in order to deal with that. I also expect this to be a continuing drain for the foreseeable future, which means that I am scaling back some of my writing goals temporarily. The main thing that will be affected by this is my Dune readalong, though I’m still making my way through the book at a decent rate even if it’s not going quite as quickly as I’d like.
That said, I have some other things in the works for the next few weeks that will hopefully make up for the slower pace of things. I have a couple of movie reviews planned for some recent DVD releases that I missed at the theater, a several long-ish essays outlined, some listicle ideas that I think could be good, and I’m working on getting back on track with my regular book reviews. On the bright side, I have been staying caught up on writing my weekly recap and reviews of Game of Thrones, and I don’t expect that to be a problem, even if progress on all other work comes to a standstill. I will always make time for wine, Game of Thrones, and Twitter on Sunday nights. There’s very little else about which I can consistently churn out 3-5k words a week.
Hugo Awards voting is open from now until July 31st. I wish I was more excited about this, but it feels more a chore than anything else this year. Once the voter packet is available, which should be early this week, I’ll make my decision about whether or not I’ll be blogging my way through any or all of it.
If I don’t do it, you can always check out Joe Sherry’s blogging of this year’s categories over at Nerds of a Feather. It looks like he’ll be working on it over the course of the next couple of months, but his first post–on the nominees for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form–is already up to kick off the project.
I have a feeling that a lot of the discussion surrounding the awards this year will be centered on how to fix them or if that’s even possible. To that end, File 770 has a good post up detailing some of the current proposals and ideas for dealing with the Puppy problem. There’s also a Hugo Voting Idea Toolkit, if you want to try your hand at coming up with an idea and need some guidance. Sadly, the problem is much easier to define than it is to solve.
Tom Hunter, the Award Director for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, shared a very informative and interesting letter this week over at Medium in which he discusses some of his thoughts on the future of that award.
In other news, this week has produced a bumper crop of aggrieved male bullshit, mostly in regard to the release of a new Ghostbusters trailer, which is significantly better than the first one but still has ladies in it and is therefore ruining the childhoods of sad manchildren (and the women who inexplicably cater to their nonsense) everywhere. Here’s the trailer:
It turns out that hordes of angry men aren’t just vocally complaining about how women ruin everything just by existing. They’re also taking action! Apparently by giving low ratings on IMDb to things that women like. The revolution is at hand, clearly.
In a week with genre gatekeepers seemingly out in force trying to suck the fun out of things, Kameron Hurley’s reminder that the establishment has always hated the new kids was especially welcome.
As was Kay Taylor Rea’s reminder that it’s not our responsibility to educate people. Women (and POC and LGBTQ people) have always been around in SFF. We’re not interlopers, and we’re not fresh on the scene.
Even if that is sometimes hard to tell if you just look at the recommended reading and Best of lists people make. It’s a good thing that some brave soul is quantifying how fucked up that is over at the new Tumblr blog, Your Book List Will Be Graded.
Rachel Swirsky interviewed Ken Liu. I’m so excited for The Wall of Storms later this year, and am feeling extra sad right now because I haven’t gotten around to reading The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories yet.
This week I’ve gotten a little farther into my Dune readalong, though not as far as I’d like. Unfortunately, I’ve still been dealing with some seasonal allergy and sinus issues (Thanks, Cincinnati spring!) and a bout of sort of generalized malaise that I’m trying to avoid nurturing into a full blown depressive episode. Instead, I’ve been trying to take it easy and go out in the sunshine when it’s available and avoid negative news, which is harder than you’d think. In any case, as a result, I haven’t actually done much internet reading this week aside from some entertainment news and a few author interviews.
Supergirl finally got its second season renewal confirmed, but with mixed news. Season two will be at the CW instead of CBS. The show always felt more like a CW show, and it seems like a better fit for that network, but I am concerned about the likely smaller budget it will receive over there. Still, I’m happy to see the show going on. Its first season was a mixed bag, but maybe season two will see Supergirl hit its stride.
Ada Palmer’s superb Too Like the Lightning came out this week, and I’m slowly working my way through it because it’s a big, beautiful, challenging novel that deserves to be savored. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying reading her interviews and guest posts when I come across them.
Finally, if you’ve enjoyed Michael R. Underwood’s first couple of Genrenauts novellas, published through Tor.com, you will want to check out his Kickstarter, which aims to publish the rest of Season One of the series by the end of this year.
May has started off much better than April ended, not that that’s any great feat. Still, it’s nice. There are leaves on the trees, I’ve been able to keep the windows open most days, I’m over (fingers crossed) the worst of my seasonal allergy nonsense for the year, and I’m really getting into my Dune readalong project. I’m also coming off of a slight reading slump in general, which is good because there’s so much I want to get through this month before we really get into summer releases.
In somewhat sad news, two blogs that I have followed for some years are closing down: SF Signal, which has been a fixture in the SFF online community for well over a decade, and My Bookish Ways. They will be missed.
Somewhat in response to the SF Signal announcement is Adam Whitehead’s post on Blogging in the Age of Austerity, which outlines some of the challenges facing fan writers and critics.
Fran Wilde did an AMA in /r/Fantasy, where she talked about her new Tor.com novella, The Jewel and Her Lapidary, which I’m hoping to get to this coming week, actually.
Even though I quit watching Sleepy Hollow ages ago, I was kind of devastated to hear about Abbie’s death in the season finale. Sadly, she’s not the only woman of color to get shafted on television this year. The Village Voice takes a look at how genre television systematically lets black women down.
So, this has been some kind of week, for sure. Obviously, the biggest news of the week, for bookish folks anyway, is probably the announcement of this year’s Hugo Awards finalists. Once again, the Rabid Puppies have fucked up the whole business, and once again basically everyone has an opinion on it. Personally, I’m still processing my thoughts on the matter, though you might have seen some inklings of my generalized frustration and anger over the last few days on Twitter. I won’t be cluttering up the regular weekend likes with Hugo stuff, though. I’ve been collecting various responses, and will probably be finishing a final post on it in a couple of days so I can have everyone’s hot takes in one place.
Game of Thrones was back on the air on Sunday night, when I livetweeted my viewing experience (helped along by a bottle of wine), and my recap/review of the episode was posted on Monday. I’ll be doing the same thing every week throughout the season, and you should be able to count on my posts being up by mid-afternoon the day after each episode airs.
Well, so this was a week that happened. It started off okay, and my daughter’s thirteenth birthday was on Wednesday. Nailed it on the present front this year, so that was great. Sadly, the rest of the week hasn’t been so good. On Thursday, Prince died, which was a bummer. Then, yesterday morning, my mom called to let me know that both of their fifteen-year-old dogs had gotten to the point of declining health where it was time to put them to sleep. We went to say our goodbyes yesterday afternoon, then my daughter went to her dad’s parents’ for the weekend, and I came home and drank a bottle of very cheap wine. It’s just been that kind of week.
Today has been somewhat better, all things considered, and I did manage to get things together enough this week to put up a poll regarding my next Let’s Read! project, which will be starting on–this is the plan, anyway–Tuesday, May 3rd. Right now it’s looking like it’s going to be Dune by Frank Herbert, but there’s still plenty of time to vote.
I haven’t done as much internet reading this week as I normally do, but I did read a few things I really liked.
Spring has sprung here in Ohio, but with it has come some of the worst seasonal allergies I’ve had in years, which means that much of the last week was spent eating pills and nursing a sinus headache that just wouldn’t quit. The bad news is that I wasn’t nearly as productive as I’d have liked–I intended to read four books, for example, and am only finishing the first one today–but the good news is that I think I’m better now. It also helps that after this week, I’ll basically only have Game of Thrones to write about as far as television goes, which means I should be much less in front of the computer, which means fewer opportunities for procrastinating and more quality reading time.
I know I’ve been teasing a new project announcement for a couple of weeks, and the aforementioned allergy issues (seriously, the worst) have delayed things a little, but I expect to be announcing by midweek and actually getting started on the project by the first week of May.
For this week, though, here’s what I’ve been reading and watching and otherwise finding interesting on the internet this week.
Following up on last week’s minor hullabaloo over the Rogue One trailer, Cora Buhlert wrote about Star Wars and Mary Sues.
I wasn’t totally on board with the Mary Sue’s assessment of Wynonna Earp earlier this week, but after last night’s episode I think I agree after all that Wynonna Earp is a heroine we need.
Reporting the news that a woman will be directing an episode of Sherlock‘s upcoming series, Bitch asks if the show will be less sexist. I’m guessing only marginally, but we’ll see.
I wasn’t planning for this to be such a spare week in terms of posts, but I didn’t realize there wouldn’t be any Supergirl or Lucifer, and I didn’t have anything else in particular planned. That’s all going to change soon, though. I’m still working out exactly what my next project is going to be and sorting out a plan for getting through all the reading I want to do, but basically all the shows I watch and write about will be ending about the time Game of Thrones starts, so for at least a couple of months that garbage show will be the only major thing I have to plan around. In the meantime, this has been a somewhat exciting week in the SFF world.
Probably the biggest news of the week is the release of a teaser trailer for the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One:
It looks amazing, and I for one am thrilled to see a new original story set in the Star Wars universe.
“The New Mother” by Eugene Fisher won a Tiptree Award this year, and it’s incredible. I highly recommend dropping whatever else you’re doing and reading it immediately.
For once, the belated weekend links are not due to anything remotely my own fault. Yesterday we had about a ten-hour power outage due to high winds here in Cincinnati. It was actually nice just listening to the wind howl without any electronic noises, but only for the first couple of hours. It was less fun driving around town trying to find a place to eat that had electricity (though it was a good excuse for Thai food, in the end) and it turns out that reading from a Nook screen in total darkness only exacerbates an allergy-induced sinus headache. By about 10 pm, I gave up hoping that the power would come back on and just called it an early night, which turned out to be wise since it didn’t come back on until about 2:30 am.
Needless to say, no power and no internet is not conducive to being very productive. Today has been better, but I’m still, frankly, a little exhausted from my big Up and Coming read through, and this weekend just hasn’t been as relaxing/recharging as I’d hoped it would be. That said, I’ve got some interesting things in the works over the next few weeks, and I hope to be making some announcements in the near-ish future.
Due to the very busy week of non-internet reading, this is another lighter week for links, but I did still manage to find a few neat things to share.
The Powerpuff Girls reboot starts tomorrow, but in the meantime you can Powerpuff Yourself.
Man at Arms: Reforged did Xena’s Chakrams:
Party Over Here’s mansplaining hotline is a legitimately great idea:
This has been another busy week with the Up and Coming project, which I’m still (fingers crossed!) on track to finish (if only by the skin of my teeth) by Wednesday. Probably after that I will take a couple of days to do nothing but play Destiny, but then I will have at least one new project to announce, plus a busy (but exciting) month in April of reading the ARCs I’ve got waiting for me on NetGalley.
My favorite things of the week were all funny things:
SF Bluestocking 