The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 3: Cheryl Morgan

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024

by Cheryl Morgan

 

This year hasn’t been good for reading that I can talk about. What that means is that Wizard’s Tower Press has been unusually busy this year, and I have had a lot of books to read that I can’t talk about. However, I did get some reading done. Here are the highlights.

By far my stand out book of the year was The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson. Marketed as YA, it is a phenomenally sophisticated science fiction novel that blows away most of what gets published these days. I wish I had read it in time for last year’s Hugos.

Mike Carey’s Echo of Worlds completed the story stated in Infinity Gate in a very satisfying way. Cat Valente once more produced incredible and often hilarious prose in Space Oddity. And Kelly Link’s The Book of Love was every bit as good as everyone expected.

 

I’ve enthused about Stark Holborn’s space westerns before. This year’s offering, Ninth Life, does not disappoint. I also have another UK writer to recommend. I really enjoyed Lorraine Wilson’s novella, The Last to Drown, and I have just ordered her latest novel, We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, because everyone else here is enthusing about it.

In terms of feminist SF&F, something very interesting is happening in RSA Garcia’s The Nightward, but I can’t say much about it until I see how the story unfolds in the second book, which won’t be out for a while.

I’m trying to get a handle on the Welsh science fiction scene, which is quite strange. Some Welsh writers, such as Al Reynolds and Gareth Powell, just get lumped into the British Writers bucket. Others are published by small presses in Wales and are almost unknown outside of the country. A few publish in Welsh.

This year I found two gems in the second group. Gwyneth Lewis is best known as having been chosen as the first National Poet of Wales after devolution. Her novella, The Meat Tree, is part of a series of modern re-tellings of stories from The Mabinogion from Seren Books. It is a fine piece of science fiction, and very much about gender.

JL George is a young writer from Cardiff. Her novel, The Word, is a YA dystopia set in a Britain run by a far right government. It is the sort of anti-Brexit novel that mainstream British publishers are probably afraid to touch.

I’m trying hard to champion books by trans people. Chief amongst these at the moment is the Endsong trilogy by Sascha Stronach, a Māori trans woman. The first two books (The Dawnhounds and The Sunforge) are out, and they feel very New Weird to me. I’ve also enjoyed books by South Africa’s Xan Van Rooyen (Waypoint Seven), and Scotland’s Elaine Gallagher (Unexploded Remnants). Next up will be Sundown in San Ojuela by Mexico’s M M Olivas.

 

Two books deeply embedded in ancient history impressed me this year. Geoff Ryman’s HIM is a fascinating re-interpretation of the life of Jesus, which starts from the assumption that a virgin birth can only produce a child identical to the mother, so Jesus must have been a trans man. Meanwhile Lucy Holland followed up the excellent Sistersong with a new book, Song of the Huntress, which weaves together the Wild Hunt and actual events from the early history of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex.

In a class all of its own is Tim Pratt’s latest, The Knife and the Serpent, which is fairly cozy multiverse high jinks but with a main character who is in the story almost by accident, has no special abilities, and has a decidedly kinky sex life.

Novellas continue to produce excellent reading. I enjoyed the latest offerings from Malka Older and Nghi Vo (The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles and The Brides of High Hill respectively), T Kingfisher’s latest Sworn Soldier story, What Feasts at Night, was a lot of fun, as was her Thornhedge, and Arkady Martine’s Rose/House.

In nonfiction, Sophus Helle followed up his book on Gilgamesh with a translation of the poems of Enheduana (the first known literary works which are ascribed to a named author). I gather that he is working on The Descent of Inana next, which I am eagerly looking forward to.

The Fantasy Centre at the University of Glasgow continues to produce interesting volumes. I was impressed by Taylor Driggers’ Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature, which provided a very different take on The Left Hand of Darkness.

John Clute’s The Book Blinders provides some fascinating literary history alongside the necessary lambasting of the British Library for its cavalier disposal of dust jackets.

Is it possible to have a feminist take on Evolutionary Biology? I would have said no before reading Ghost Stories for Darwin by Banu Subramaniam. It is a little heavy on the academic science in places, but a fascinating read.

And my tour of nonfiction would not be compete with mention of Alex Pierce’s excellent new online magazine, Speculative Insight. Please do support her. There are few enough places for paid SF&F criticism so this venture is very welcome.

There continues to be a lot of SF&F on television, but most of it is pretty meh. The best stuff appears to be in cartoons. My favorite of the year is the second series of Star Trek: Prodigy with the new season of Lower Decks not far behind. Being a tragic X-Men fan from way back, I also enjoyed X-Men ’97. I am looking forward to starting Scavenger’s Reign.

 

The best of the live action has been Agatha All Along which managed to turn the relatively simple task of introducing Billy Maximoff to the MCU into a clever little series with a great supporting cast.

I have seen very few films this year, though I was pleased to see Dune 2 in an actual cinema because the visuals are glorious.

I watch a lot of sport on TV. The less said about the current state of Welsh rugby the better, but our soccer players have been outstanding. If the Aqueduct staff follow Seattle Reign they will be familiar with our star player, Jess Fishlock, and our captain, Angharad James. This year we qualified for the finals of the European Championships, which is our women’s team’s first ever trip to a major international tournament.

This year’s travel has taken me to Malta for an Assyriology conference. If you are at all into history (or Caravaggio) the island is a must-visit destination. The weather is glorious too, which helps a lot. I have also been to conventions in Finland and Sweden. I was even able to go to Worldcon this year, as it was in Glasgow, but I spent almost all of my time there behind a dealer table so I saw very little of the convention, or of the many friends who came over for it.

 

 Cheryl Morgan blogs, reviews and podcasts regularly at Cheryl’s Mewsings and Salon Futura. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. She also lectures regularly on topics of SF&F literature, and on queer history.

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 16: Cheryl Morgan

 

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023

by Cheryl Morgan

 

 

Some of my favorite writers have had new novels out this year, and top of the list has to be Menewood by Nicola Griffith. If you are a fan of Hild then you will love this book. I need say no more.

A close second, mainly because I was a sensitivity reader for the book so am a bit biased, is Hopeland by Ian McDonald. I really don’t know how to describe it, save that it is climate fiction and is adamant that there is still some good left in the world.

Mike Carey has returned to science fiction with Infinity Gate, the first book in a two-part series about a war for the multiverse. One of the major characters is a teenage girl from a species that has evolved from rabbits. I’ve seen kangaroos in action close up. I know what a human-sized rabbit could do with those feet, and Mike does too.

Samit Basu is in fine form with The Jinn-Bot of Shantipoor, a science fiction novel that is based on but by no means shackled too, Aladdin. As usual with Basu, it marries serious thinking about society, great action, and wry humor.

I’ve been following Tim Powers’ career for decades now. I don’t always love his books, but My Brother’s Keeper shows him on top form. His portrayal of Emily Brontë as a brave and determined young woman trying to save her family from a werewolf curse is a joy to behold.

 

On to some younger writers now, and Valerie Valdes is fast becoming a favorite. I often see her work described as “cozy”, but while you are generally guaranteed a happy ending, Where Peace is Lost deals with some pretty weighty topics.

 

The book that should have won all the awards this year is The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. Thankfully the British Fantasy Awards got it right, but the book’s absence from Hugo and World Fantasy shortlists is a mystery to me.

 

Emily Tesh has graduated from novellas to novels. Some Desperate Glory does a fabulous job of shaking out tired space opera tropes and giving them new life.

I’m always pleased to see books from small presses do well. Sadly, Unsing Stories has since closed, but in The Coral Bones they produced a fine piece of feminist climate fiction that caught the notice of several UK awards.

Still with planetary science, but on a much longer timescale, is The Terraformers by Analee Newitz. This sort of very long view of social development used to be a staple of early 20^th- century SF, and it is good to see it brought up to date.

Hopefully I have enthused about Stark Holborn before, but if not her science fiction Westerns are well worth a look. Hel’s Eight is the sequel to Ten Low and is every bit as good.

Finally in the newer writers, L R Lam has been getting steadily better throughout their career and  DragonFall is an imaginative new take on dragon lore that is worth checking out.

 

When I took on Juliet E McKenna’s backlist more than 10 years ago it was with the hope that continued exposure would eventually lead to her getting a mainstream contract again. This year it finally happened with The Cleaving, a very feminist re-telling of the Arthurian story. Juliet is still doing new books for Wizard’s Tower, and the latest, The Green Man’s Quarry, sold over 1000 copies in its first week, which is very good for a small press.

 

A project I set myself this year was to finally read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence. I was too old for it when it first came out. I can see why it is so popular with younger readers, but the lack of agency of the characters nagged at me.

Continuing series that I’m fond of had new books this year. That included Furious Heaven from Kate Elliott, System Collapse for Martha Wells, Translation State from Ann Leckie, Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken MacLeod, and A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard.

Several great series also reached their end. We had Salt on the Midnight Fire from Liz Williams, Promises Stronger Than Darkness from Charlie Jane Anders, and Blue Beautiful World from Karen Lord. I want to make particular mention of the Rhapsody of Blood series by Roz Kaveney which finished with a fifth volume, Revelations, this year, but is really one giant secret history novel spanning the whole of human history.

 

The flood of amazing novellas seems to be slowing down a little, perhaps because readers are reacting to the very high prices being asked for them. This year’s favorites for me were Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo and Even Though I Knew the End by C L Polk.

In nonfiction we saw the release of Space Crone, a collection of wonderfully pointed pieces by Ursula K Le Guin. I was also very impressed by Jack Dann’s The Fiction Writers Guide to Alternate History. The round table he ran with various practitioners of the art is a wonderful demonstration of the absence of rules for writing because every writer is different.

One of the oldest stories in human history is the Epic of Gilgamesh. If you really want to understand that book, I recommend the new translation by Danish scholar, Sophus Helle. Sophus is an Assyriologist with an excellent understanding of literature. He not only provides a fresh and very readable translation, but also a comprehensive explanation of the social and historical background to the creation and development of the Epic.

Talking of mythology, Ronald Hutton is always excellent for debunking of modern nonsense about pagan survivalism. However, there do seem to be some traditions that have survived. In Queens of the Wild Hutton takes a look at some of them. Excellent scholarship as usual.

Talking of scholarship, I was amazed by Begin Transmission. Tilly Bridges appears to have worked her way slowly through the four Matrix films, and the animated series, frame by frame, noting things of interest. The result is something only a person with that level of dedication, and a thorough grounding the film-making theory, could have produced. I’m not sure that I buy all of the allegorical elements that Bridges claims to have found, but the evidence seems very compelling and the Wachowski’s are absolutely smart enough to have done everything she describes.

I read a lot of history books these days. Most of them are quite academic, but one that stands out for readability and fascinating subject matter is On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock. It tells the stories of indigenous people from the Americas who, back in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, took the long and hazardous journey from their homes to Europe, a land full of savage and uncivilized people.

A more recent history best seller is Normal Women by Philippa Gregory. It is a wonderfully feminist attempt at restoring women to British history over a span of 900 years. Much of it is fascinating, and heartwarmingly inclusive. However, the one element of the book that I am an expert on – trans history – is full of errors, which makes me worry about the accuracy of the rest of the book.

I’ve had essays included in two academic works this year. I make no claims for greatness myself, but my fellow contributors have done fine work. Thus I warmly recommend Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alastair Sims, and Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Francesa Barbini. I’m especially grateful to Dimitra and Alastair for letting me write about Patricia Kennealy-Morrison’s delightfully bonkers Celtic space opera, The Keltiad.

On now to film and TV. Haters of superhero stories have been gleefully predicting the death of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for some time now. However, The Marvels was the most delightful film I have seen in a long time, while Across the SpiderVerse is a work of genius. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is much better than most reviews suggest, and Loki Season #2 took a very interesting turn. Having said that, the Nick Fury TV series, Secret Invasion, was terrible, leading me to suspect that it wasn’t only the title sequences that were entirely software-generated.

The Barbie movie did a lot of things very right. Margot Robbie and Kate McKinnon were brilliant as usual, and the feminist rant delivered by Gloria (America Ferrera) was very much on point. I can understand that some women are against anything promoting the ridiculous Barbie body image, but the film is opposed to it too. Also the film left the anti-trans bridge furious, which must speak well of its feminist credentials.

Good Omens Season #2 was short, weird, and utterly heartbreaking at the end. I can’t wait for season #3.

Star Trek continues to be interesting. While Picard Season #3 was primarily fan service, Strange New Worlds is reliably wonderful. Lower Decks is still managing to take the piss out of Trek while still loving the franchise. Sadly I’m feeling pretty meh about the final season of Discovery.

I have mostly given up on Star Wars, but I was pleasantly surprised by Ahsoka. I loved how it unashamedly bought in to the fantasy aspect of the franchise, and how that irritated a lot of dudebro fanboys.

I thought that Amazon’s adaption of William Gibson’s The Peripheral was superb, and I’m very sad that we won’t be getting a second season.

And then there is Doctor Who. With Russell T Davies back at the helm the series is once again ridiculously silly, delightfully heartwarming, and occasionally edge-of-the-seat scary. This is the third series I’ve mentioned that has David Tennant in it, which probably says something about me. Ncuti Gatwa’s initial appearance was very promising.

 

Now that I’m resident in Wales I’m trying to listen to more musicians who perform in Welsh. I mentioned Gwenno last year. Her latest album, Tesor, has most of the songs in Cornish, which is very similar to Welsh. The music is fabulous, if electronica is your thing.

 

If you prefer something more traditionally Welsh, I warmly recommend the harp music of Cerys Hafana. And if Indie rock is your thing, a band called Mellt (Welsh for Lightning) is worth checking out.

 

I’m writing this only a few days before the Winter Solstice. That’s traditionally a time for hauling out albums by the likes of Clannad and Enya, but this year I will be playing Heilung. They describe themselves as an experimental folk band, but there is something very metal about their attitude. With members from Denmark, Norway and Germany, they specialise in recreating the sounds of Iron Age Northern Europe, complete with lyrics drawn from runic inscriptions.

Neatly segueing on from that, the games company, Modiphius, has successfully Kickstarted a new tabletop RPG called Cohors Cthulhu. This is basically Call of Cthulhu in the Roman Empire, which is so much my jam that I might have to dust off my game-mastering skills.

The Podcasts I listen to these days are mostly history-themed. My current favorite is Gone Mediaeval from the History Hit stable. Co-host Matt Lewis is a staunch Richardian, which is how he got the scoop on Philippa Langley’s amazing discoveries about the Princes in the Tower. I’m very much looking forward to reading Langley’s book on her research.

In terms of travel, I was delighted to get to the Eurocon in Uppsala in Sweden. It is a beautiful city, and the old Viking settlement with its huge royal burial mounds is well worth a visit.

Finally I warmly recommend the Fantasy exhibition at the British Library. The associated events are great too. Many of them are available online, and you can find several of the past ones available via the Living Knowledge Network. 

 

 Cheryl Morgan blogs, reviews and podcasts regularly at Cheryl’s Mewsings and Salon Futura. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. She also lectures regularly on topics of SF&F literature, and on queer history.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 18: Cheryl Morgan

 

 

 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022

by Cheryl Morgan

 

The pandemic might be vanishing from people’s consciousness, but 2022 has been even more of a blur for me because I have been busy buying a house. I now live in lovely (if rather damp) South Wales, in a valley that was once home to the great boar, Twrch Trwyth.

The main reason for moving is that it has become almost impossible, as a trans person, to get healthcare in England. Even if you are prepared to pay for it, most private medical services won’t take you as a customer, and the few gender specialists are all massively over-subscribed. The secondary reason is that I had run out of space where I was living. One of the things I have been perusing of late has been the Billy Bookcase page on the IKEA website.

 

Of course I have also read books, though not nearly as many as I would have liked. Let’s start, as last year, with the gender-related stuff.

 

I’m a sucker for Classical retellings, and in Wrath Goddess Sing Maya Deane pulls of the audacious trick of re-casting Achilles as a trans woman. If you know your Greek myth, you will know that this is not as far-fetched as it might initially sound.

 

Gender is also a theme of a brilliant ecological first contact novel from Ruthana Emrys. A Half-Built Garden will probably attract interest mainly for the political landscape of the world in which it is set, but there’s lots of juicy gender politics to get your teeth into as well.

 

One of the most pleasant surprises of the year has been The Bruising of Qilwa. This novella from Naseem Jamnia is not much about gender, though it does have a non-binary protagonist. It is a medical mystery set in a fantasy world that manages to approach the medical and magical sides of the story with the rigor of hard science fiction.

 

Lesbian space opera continues to be a thing and, with Bluebird, Ciel Pierlot seems to have found the perfect elevator pitch. “Gun-slinging girl space pirate with hot librarian girlfriend” hits all the right notes. It is a very impressive debut too.

 

Talking of lesbian science fiction (and yes, the Locked Tomb series is now very obviously science fiction), Nona the Ninth did not disappoint. The ambition that Tamsyn Muir brings to this series continues to delight me, and I for one am happy that there will be a fourth book.

 Any year with a new Guy Gavriel Kay book in it is a good year. All the Seas of the World returns the some of the same characters from Kay’s previous two novels, while introducing some fascinating new perspectives. The only downside is that we now have to wait two to three years for the next one.

 

Another stand-out novel of the year was The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Sylvia Moreno Garcia. This creative re-working of the Wells novel has important things to say about the colonization of Mexico as well as about gender relations.

 

From Mexico we move to Finland and The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta. This is a clever epistolary novel that has a lot to say about the current climate crisis from the twin perspectives of a near future where Earth has been abandoned by the wealthy, and traditional spiritual practices rooted in the deep past.

 

Aspects, the unfinished final novel by John M Ford, was every bit as good as we’d been told. Sadly it is unfinished, and it seems likely that there would have been sequels, which makes it even more sad that Ford was taken from us so young.

 

Finally in novels, hard science fiction by a woman. Lucy Kissick did her PhD at Oxford on the lost lakes of Mars. She’s an ideal person to be writing about terraforming. Plutoshine captures the various debates around that well, and gives a starring role to the most distant member of the solar system.

 

Well not quite all the of novels, because I did read one by Saad Z Hossain: Cyber Mage. However, I also read Kundo Wakes Up, which is a fine novella in the same world. So Hossain provides a neat bridge to the shorter fiction. His work is a lot of fun.

 

One of my favorite novellas of the year was These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed. It is an intriguing tale of archaeology in a ruined city after some sort of dystopian even that may have included an alien invasion. I was delighted to see this book on the British Fantasy Award shortlists.

 

The Monk & Robot novellas from Becky Chambers manage to be both smart and charming. I suspect that you know this already.

 

Much to my delight, we have a new Singing Hills novella from Nghi Vo. Into the Riverlands is an exercise of Wuxia, which Vo manages with her customary brilliance.

 

If you are wondering why I haven’t mentioned Spear by Nicola Griffith, it is because I got an ARC and wrote about it last year. The folks at Locus tell me that its word count classes it as a novel. Please remember than when doing award votes.

 

I’d also like to mention a few authors who are continuing with good series. Aliette de Bodard has both her Fallen Angels in Paris and her Vietnamese Space Opera series going, and both had excellent new volumes this year. Liz Williams has produced a new volume in her delightful Fallow Sisters series. And Charlie Jane Anders is continuing her entertaining YA space opera series, Unstoppable.

 

As you probably know, I’m not a great reader of short fiction. But I did get to read Midnight Doorways by Usman T Malik and I was absolutely blown away by it. A very worthy winner of both the Crawford and World Fantasy Awards.

 

Wizard’s Tower continues to move forward, with new books from Chaz Brenchley and Juliet McKenna. I must be doing something right, as two old friends from Australia have asked me to publish their work.

 

Generation Nemesis, by Sean McMullen, is a timely reminder that if climate change does cause a major catastrophe then someone will be held responsible, and that someone will probably be us. That one is already available.

 

Glenda Larke has always impressed me with her ability to suffuse epic fantasy with profoundly feminist themes. The Tangled Lands does this brilliantly and will be available in January.

 

On now to podcasts and a very warm recommendation for Doctor Who: Redacted <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0c0krqf>. Given everything else that is going on in the UK right now, it is remarkable enough that the BBC should produce a Doctor Who audio drama written, produced and acted mainly by queer women. I’m delighted to report that it is also very good indeed. I’m not sure how widely available it is, but if you can listen to it, please do so, and remember it when the Hugo ballot opens.

 

I’m listening to a lot of history podcasts, and one of my favorites is Kate Lister’s Betwixt the Sheets <https://play.acast.com/s/betwixt-the-sheets>. from the History Hit stable. Billed as “the history of sex, scandal & society”, it covers all those things that history teachers were too embarrassed to mention. From the bra to the boob job, from Vikings to Rasputin, and from Witches to Sex Robots, it is all here. A particular favourite is “Rochester: The Restoration's Filthiest Poet”, in which Rebecca Rideal tells us all about the nefarious life of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and Neil Gaiman reads extracts from some of the smuttiest poetry ever written.

 

I have been buying art books again, because the very excellent Liam Sharp has run a set of Kickstarter campaigns for a series of three retrospectives. Liam works mostly in comics, so you may not have seen much of his work, but I suspect that most of you are familiar with his image of Wonder Woman.

 

That takes us neatly to TV and movies. The folks at Marvel have been very busy. Since last year’s post I’ve watched four TV series: Hawkeye, Moon Knight, She-Hulk and Ms Marvel. I like the way that Marvel are trying to do something different with each series, rather than stick to traditional superhero formats. Ms Marvel was by far the best of them, and I look forward to seeing Kamala Khan again soon.

 

In the movies, Thor: Love & Thunder and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness were both entertaining, but not spectacular. I no longer live 10 minutes' walk from a movie theater, and what venues I do have don’t seem to offer as many screenings as I’m used to. Consequently I missed Wakanda Forever and will have to report on that some other time.

 

The unexpected TV hit of the year was Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. While Discovery’s attempts to chronicle the pre-Kirk era largely fell flat, this series has managed to capture the feeling of the Original Series very well.

 

 

Sadly Galadriel: Warrior Princess, sorry, Rings of Power, was most notable for the nonsense talked about the series by butt-hurt dudebros. I couldn’t finish The Silmarillion, so I have no great stake in the faithfulness of the plot. I look forward to reading Tolkien scholars’ takes on the series when it is finished.

 

The Dune film was not bad, which is a lot better than I was expecting. By far the best thing about it was the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, which deservedly won two Oscars.

 

I am hopelessly biased with regard to The Sandman. I’ve known Neil for decades and am delighted that he has been able to bring his most-loved creation to the screen under his creative control. I’m even more delighted that he has brought on board Catherine McMullen (daughter of Sean mentioned above). I’ve known her since she was 9, and she was clearly destined for greatness then.

 

I don’t have much in the way of new musical discoveries this year, but if you are into electronica I suggest you check out the work of Gwenno. In particular her Y Dydd Olaf (The Last Day) is a science fiction concept album with lyrics in Welsh and Cornish.

 

I did attend one live concert. Jethro Tull did a charity gig in Bath Abbey to raise funds for the building, and for Wells Cathedral which is the other major venue in the Diocese of Bath & Wells. The likes of “Aqualung” and “Locomotive Breath” are not the sort of things I ever expected to hear performed in a church, let alone one in such a stuffy city as Bath, but I was very happy to be surprised by what was allowed.

 

 Cheryl Morgan blogs, reviews and podcasts regularly at Cheryl’s Mewsings and Salon Futura. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press . She also lectures regularly on topics of SF&F literature, and on queer history.