The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt. 16: Margaret McBride

 

 2024 Book list

by Margaret McBride

 

I read a lot again this year but not in as random a fashion as usual. We are planning to move next year so I am rereading a lot before selling books. Three that I particularly liked: 

 

China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh–a Tiptree/Otherwise Award winner. The plot organization is unusual; the story of three people is given. Each is interesting and gives details about a future culture in China, the U S, and Mars. Only a slight connection exists between the three, but I find the overall effect satisfying. 

 

Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon–if you have ever commented about the small number of older women characters in SF, you need to read this novel. An older woman decides to hide and stay on a planet when the other humans are forced to leave. She is delighted with the chance to wear fewer clothes, eat what she wants, etc. but after a while aliens show up and she has to figure how to communicate and ends up helping them with a birth and acting as ambassador for peace when humans come back.

 

Color of Distance by Amy Thomson–top of my list whenever I’m asked for novels about really alien aliens. A human is assumed dead and left on a planet but kept alive by the aliens. Some of the book gives their perspective and also the problems the human woman has trying to understand how their culture and environment work. She finds some of their actions repulsive but the underlying needs to sustain the environment are well presented.

I reread eleven books by Samuel Delany and six by Theodore Sturgeon before going to the Sturgeon Symposium at KU with Delany as guest. If you have not read Delany (or it’s been along time), I suggest Babel 17. The scenes where the poet Rydra tries to figure out a new language including how to communicate certain concepts to a man whose language does not have terms for I or you are wonderful, plus the descriptions of how some humans have changed their bodies and their family and sexual arrangements are more alien and interesting than many non-humans in other novels or tv.

 

For Sturgeon, I recommend More than Human or any of his short story collections. Some bits seem a bit outdated but the characters and the plot are interesting enough to keep me reading. Particularly noteworthy, especially for fiction written in the 50s and 60s, is the frequent comment about the need for male/female interaction in work, education, marriage, etc. to be equal, and the plot bits about getting rid of domestic abuse to women and children and sexual harassment in the workplace.

I read as many as I could from the February Locus Best of the Year list and my favorite was To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, a first novel by Monique Blackgoose. It’s an alternate history where people from Norse countries have settled North America and done multiple awful things to the natives living there. After years with the beginning of cars and towns, there are still dragon species which bond with humans upon clutching and are very important to the society. The main character is told she must leave her “primitive” family and culture and go to school to become “civilized” after she bonds with a dragon. Some characters are bi and lesbian (although not accepted as civilized.) One character is on the spectrum, and how he is perceived and manages to fight against the biases is depicted well. I will definitely read more by this author.

Three other books stood out when I reviewed my reading list from 2024:

 

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher. Horror genre rarely works for me, but this novel has humor and great characters and believable family connections along with the Gothic elements: “Real or not, monsters don’t bother you while you’re peeing. (This is one of the lesser known laws.)” There is a vulture who looks more like it would ask the dead to play fetch than escort them to the afterlife. I enjoyed it.

 

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon is amazingly well researched (pages of bibliography) and quite readable for a layperson. I appreciated the political/feminist bits as well as lots of paleo/fossil information.

 

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling with eighteen totally original stories–all kinds of funny and scary stories  including young Victoria learning how to do magic and others coping with fairies or becoming the monsters themselves.

 

 Margaret McBride is retired from the University of Oregon where Gender and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy was her favorite class to teach. She is the editor of the tenth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, Social Justice (Redux). She has been the chair of the Tiptree/Otherwise Award two times, has participated on over forty panels at WisCon and hopes to do so again. 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023, pt. 29: Margaret McBride

 

Aqueduct Reading List 2023

by Margaret McBride

 

 

I taught at the University of Oregon for 30+ years (including classes on gender and sexuality in science fiction and fantasy). Now that I’m retired I have a lot of time to read. Choosing which ones I liked the best from my list made me realize I am responding most positively to books where characters manage to find community and work together through hard times (must be responding to the horrific political, international, environmental news that I read every day).

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki–a mixture of fantasy and science fiction with the hurt of a trans character being abused by family, angst of music competitions, fear of aliens escaping conflict but tempered by the characters changing and working together. The scenes where the trans character is ignored and then finally helped by clothing store clerks are heart-breaking. You can’t go wrong with an Otherwise Award winner where aliens and an AI hologram run a doughnut shop in L. A.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree–well developed fantasy work that examines economic issues where troubles are overcome by unexpected people managing to work together. I loved the characters.

Interference by Sue Burke (sequel to Semiosis which must be read first)–unique aliens with different versions of what sentience could be like with interesting human characters and the ethical decisions they must make.

Stage-Struck Vampires by Suzy McKee Charnas I reread most of her books for her memorial at WisCon and am selecting this one to comment on because her essay about writing Walk to the End of the World, Motherlines, The Furies, Conqueror’s Child was enlightening (the series is well worth reading too). She was criticized because Motherlines had no male characters! Finishing the series took longer than she wanted because she had trouble finding a resolution where men and women could coexist in the horrific future she had envisioned. The stories in Stage-Struck Vampires are good too.

KnifeWitch by Susan di Rende Plot elements might sound dreary: young woman kidnapped by pirates to be sold to mean cult has an encounter with a sentient sea monster. But no–this book was great fun with all kinds of unexpected plot twists. I read it on the plane coming home from WisCon and laughed out loud.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich–takes place during the first Covid pandemic year in Erdrich’s book store with maybe a ghost, examination of indigenous issues, post-incarceration difficulties, relationship problems, importance of reading and even includes a list of recommended books!

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings–what a fun premise: a human spaceship with alien ambassador on board is stuck in unknown space with unworking engine. They are able to get to an old nearby ship which turns out to have the name and the crew of the humans that negotiated peace after a long war with the aliens 150 years ago! The crew are a scruffy lot fleeing from government charges–not the heroic crew that are the historic legends. Flashbacks tell more about what is going on. The author enjoys playing with common time paradoxes (although not the “what if you killed a grandparent” one). How much can the future people tell of past events without changing their time in unknown and maybe horrifying ways?

Under the Whispering Door by T. J. Klune I might have skipped this one based on a summary of plot: ghost guided away from his own funeral by a Reaper and taken to a tea house and given time to adjust before leaving through a door in the ceiling. However I liked The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries enough that I gave this novel a try, and am glad I did. The four main characters (two dead and two alive and able to see and talk with the dead) are likeable and even funny at times while dealing with their unpleasant circumstances. There’s even a ghost dog! The novel is not religious in a conventional way–the being in charge of gathering the ghosts is called the manager and makes mistakes. The novel felt a bit like Becky Chambers’ novels–lots of problems but somehow human good and community manage.

Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell Another one where if I’d been given a synopsis, I might not have read this book. Romances about people who can’t get together because of misunderstandings are not my thing, but I did enjoy this novel. The two main characters are interesting, as are some secondary characters. The plot is an intriguing mix of politics with changing views of who is the bad guy. The backstory of what remnants are and how the various levels of power came to be could be developed into its own SF novel. The first sentence gives some hint as to the humor and style: “‘Well, someone has to marry the man’ the Emperor said.” Then the next paragraph tells us she’s talking to her least favorite grandson.

Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore The novel is described as a YA fantasy with non-binary and neuro-divergent characters. I found the descriptions of ADHD and being on the spectrum believable, but regardless, they were interesting people who solved complex problems. I’ve loved everything McLemore has written, and this one continues to insure her works will be on my must-read list.

Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler–won Locus readers’ best first book for 2022. Warning: a dark look at environment disasters, corporate greed and nasty politics, but the characters are interesting and I liked the multiple view points and the inter-chapter quotes. The focus on octopuses led me to read two non-fiction books about octopuses.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett I’ve liked her novels since I read The Magician’s Assistant, and this one definitely belongs on my recommended list. The story goes back and forth in time as a mom in her 50s tell her adult daughters (living at home during the first year of Covid) about her relationship with a well-known actor before they were born. The layers of how she felt then versus how she regards the events years later mixed with the speculation and misunderstandings from her daughters are intriguing.

PS “They Will Dream in the Garden,” Gabriela Damian Miravete’s short story, won the Otherwise Award in 2018, and a collection of her short stories with the same title was published this month by Rosarium Press. I have ordered a copy because I love that short story (it’s available on line too).

 

Margaret McBride is retired from the University of Oregon where Gender and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy was her favorite class to teach. She is the editor of the tenth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, Social Justice (Redux). She has been the chair of the Tiptree/Otherwise Award two times, has participated on over forty panels at WisCon and hopes to do so again. 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2021, pt. 11: Margaret McBride

 

Most Remembered Books of 2021
by Margaret McBride 

 

I read a lot and usually prefer science fiction over fantasy, so I was somewhat surprised as I scanned my reading list to realize that several fantasy books were most memorable and that the SF books that I could recall the best were rereads. 

 

Eleanor Arnason A Woman of the Iron People--chosen by a member of my book group. Even after having done multiple rereads previously, I was impressed by the clever, complex environmental and cultural world building--not only of the planet visited by Earth explorers but also of a future Earth. Put this novel on the top of your to-be-read list if you haven't read it. 

Becky Chambers A Closed and Common Orbit. Near the end of November I was stressing out at news, Facebook, etc. and decided to reread a book with some hope and warmth. This novel does have horrible depictions of environmental problems and child abuse; but humans, AIs and sentient aliens of multiple genders and sexualities manage to form communities and families. 

 

Kathleen Goonan Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues, Crescent Rhapsody I decided to reread this series after hearing of Goonan's death. I had enjoyed hearing her read and talk on panels at several conferences and had read most of her novels. Nevertheless I found myself wondering what was going on in the first volume, but the characters and invented details of the future world were enough to keep me reading. Things become clearer in the later volumes with interesting comments on the real life. If you are intrigued by the idea of a virus that makes people, including a young girl, behave and think like Mark Twain and thus able to steer a steamboat down the Mississippi, this is a book for you. I have not yet reread the fourth book Light Music. 

Alix E. Harrow The Once and Future Witches This novel is an alternate history of women seeking the vote in the U. S. at the same time as witches are still being burned. Fairy tales and children's rhymes are clues to spells (the Sisters Grimm compiled them). Characters are poor, rich, women of color, lesbians who are in hiding, women who go along with the power-hungry men...lots of variety and references to real historic events. 

T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking Listed as a middle reader or YA novel and quite funny in spots, this book includes interesting comments on how women with and without power are treated, how people come together to help one another. I loved the gingerbread warriors and a carnivorous sourdough starter. 

 

Ursula K. Le Guin Conversations on Writing and Out Here I found two unusual and Oregon-based books to fulfill my promise to myself to read or reread something by Le Guin every year. The first one is three radio interviews with Le Guin and David Naimon (and his introductions) on Science Fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. I so enjoyed reading and remembering her intelligence, self-awareness, humor, and opinions on other writers, publishing, politics, etc. She talks about pronoun use, tense, and point of view in fiction, problems of cultural appropriation, why people are ignoring science, and other interesting things. Here's one example from pp. 96-97: "When I can use prose as I do in writing stories as a direct means or form of thinking, not as a way of saying something I know or believe, not as a vehicle for a message, but as an exploration, a voyage of discovery resulting in something I didn't know before I wrote it, then I feel that I am using it properly." The second book is photography by Roger Dorband of Steens Mountain Country in Oregon with poetry and drawings by Le Guin...great fun to see another aspect of Le Guin's art. From "McCoy Creek Reflection": "Let me be quiet and my mind reflect/the shadow of a willow leaf on water." I love the ending of "An Incident at the Field Station:" "Then that old woman/ CLAPPED!/her hands/turned round/and followed whirling,/shouting, dancing,/dust with the dust of the whirlwind,/whirling up taller and thinner/way up over the Field Station,/shouting louder and louder/and vanished." 

L. E. Modesitt Jr. The Saga of Recluce series begins with The Magic of Recluce; I read the first four last year and five through nine this year. I usually don't like long series but I'm not tired of this one. I started it because I heard Modesitt talk at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts about his desire to rectify what he saw as a weakness in fantasy world building: little attention paid to economics. How does food get from the farms to cities? Who makes the clothing and mends the wagons? How do the wizard schools get the means to survive? etc. His novels cover those issues in interesting ways and do a lot more. The women characters are warriors, traders, manipulative sorcerers, and important in many ways not always subservient to the main male characters. The books raise interesting points about finding balance between environmental health and human needs/wishes, balance between those with power (or wanting power) and those willing to live a simple life, balance between Chaos and Order (and neither is completely good or bad). One volume does bring in SF aspects when the survivors of a crashed space ship interact with the planetary citizens, but it is essentially a fantasy series. 

Kim Stanley Robinson The Ministry for the Future The plot structure of this novel was a bit difficult for me, but the details about climate/environmental problems with the notes of hope that we might be able to keep plant, animal, and human species alive kept me reading. 

Isabel Wilkerson Caste This book does not have the narrative structure of The Warmth of Other Suns, but I think it may be a book that every person in the U. S. should read. With much research and examples, Wilkerson examines the destructiveness of the caste systems in India, Nazi Germany, and the United States. Many of the historic and current examples are disturbing to read but an awareness of such continuing problems seems necessary in this time of book banning, confusion over critical race theory, etc. The book has many statements that need to be read by all: "Without an enlightened recognition of the price we all pay for a caste system, the hierarchy will likely shape-shift as it has in the past to ensure that the structure remains intact" (p. 382). "Our era calls for a public accounting of what caste has cost us, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so that every American can know the full history of our country, wrenching though it may be....'We must make every effort [to ensure] that the past injustice, violence and economic discrimination will be made known to the people,' Einstein said in an address to the National Urban League" (p. 395). 

**For my most memorable, I recommend a PBS series Craft in America (especially the one subtitled "Threads"). Terese Agnew makes quilts with a political theme including one that looks like a black and white photo of a woman sewing in a sweatshop that is made of thousands of clothing labels sewn together (available on line). 

 

 

Margaret McBride is retired from the University of Oregon where Gender and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy was her favorite class to teach. She is the editor of the tenth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, Social Justice (Redux). She has been the chair of the Tiptree/Otherwise Award two times, has participated on over forty panels at WisCon and hopes to do so again. 

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2020, pt. 7 : Margaret McBride

 

Aqueduct Reading List 2020

By Margaret McBride

 

I read a lot, so  my memory of books tends to get fuzzy, but the list below has books I remember well from my reading in 2020.

 

 

Trapped in the R.A.W.    Kate Boyes 2019 A man checking out my books at the library recommended this one after seeing the SF I was checking out. It's an original, post-apocalypse, alien-invasion tale with innovative use of illustrations from 19th-century books.

 

Night Watchman   Louise Erdrich 2020 I liked this one better than several earlier novels by Erdrich. Iit does have fantasy elements but is based on the history of her grandfather...strong writing style, interesting characters and plot.

 

European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman 2018 and Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl 2019   Theodore Goss (2nd & 3rd after The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (2017) I love revisionist myth-making and these books are having so much fun reimagining women characters from older fiction.

 

The City We Became N. K. Jemisin 2020 I read this when it first came out and then reread in the fall because it was chosen for my Eugene-based SF book group. I liked it even more, perhaps because of the discussion. I was able to suspend disbelief better for the fantasy elements and enjoy the wonderful descriptive style and interesting characters.

 

People's Future of the United States   Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, ed. 2019  Wonderful anthology--worth reading for the first story alone, "The Bookstore at the End of America" by Charlie Jane Anders.

 

Words Are My Matter  Ursula K Le Guin 2019  I have given myself the joyful assignment to reread at least one Le Guin book every year and this year was even better because much of this one was new to me...from snarky comments about Fox News and descriptions of what she thought good writing needed to be plus book reviews which added to my list of what to read or reread.

 

Her Body and Other Parties  Carmen Maria Machado 2017  I read this collection when it came out and reread it this year because it was chosen for my SF book group. I liked it even more, again perhaps because of the discussion. The stories range from SF to fantasy to horror to "oh, that's strange." Some of the descriptive paragraphs were so good, I found myself rereading and savoring them.

 

Dark and Deepest Red  2020 and Bianca and Roja  2018   Anna-Marie McLemore Both of these retell fairy tales with interesting perspective on gender, class, ethnicity. The first one interweaves a contemporary plot with a story of Strasbourg, France in 1518. McLemore won the Tiptree/Otherwise Award in 2016 for When the Moon Was Ours.

 

Song for A New Day    Sarah Pinsker 2019 I can't think of another SF book that deals with music in such an interesting way and depicts the effects of a pandemic on live music--very timely.

 

An Unkindness of Ghosts    Rivers Solomon 2017   A unique, challenging retelling of the  generational starship trope.

 

Theory of Bastards    Audrey Schulman 2018 Gender, disability, environmental crisis, and bonobo chimps--my second time reading and I still loved it.

 

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration   Isabel Wilkerson 2010   Le Guin writes that she likes narration even in nonfiction books and this is a great example of using story to good effect. The author has done an amazing amount of research but focusing on three families who moved from the South in different decades made the book more interesting to me.

 

BTW  Two of my favorite books are Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason (1993, reprinted by Aqueduct Press with an introduction by Ursula K. LeGuin) and Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge (2002).

 

My most memorable viewing was re-watching two magical films--Baghdad Cafe and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead--they still made me laugh.

 

 

 

 Margaret McBride taught science fiction for more than 20 years at the University of Oregon, including three classes using fiction from the James Tiptree, Jr./Otherwise Award. She was chair of the 2004 Tiptree Award panel. She has been on many panels at WisCon since WisCon 20.She is the editor of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10, which Aqueduct Press published in 2016.

 

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10: Social Justice (Redux)

I'm pleased to announce the release from Aqueduct Press of the tenth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, Social Justice (Redux), edited by Margaret McBride, in both print and e-book editions. WisCon 39's Guest of Honor speeches by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson inspired the theme of this volume. In her speech, Johnson delivered a cri de coeur: "We need diverse stories, we need a million mirrors of different shapes and sizes. Not just so we can see ourselves. So that they can see us through our own eyes." Robinson exhorted: "We now need to institute global justice and equality for all, for two reasons that bond together into a single reason: It's the right thing to do morally, and it's the survival thing to do."

In her introduction, McBride quotes Grace Paley: "Although writers may not want to be in charge of justice or anything like that, to some extent they are if they really are illuminating what isn't seen."

The volume includes the texts of Johnson and Robinson's speeches, as well as the keynote speech Julie Phillips delivered at the Tiptree Symposium in December 2015, and essays by Cheryl Morgan, Takayuki Tatsumi, Nisi Shawl, Johanna Sinisalo, Kathryn Allan, Ian Hagemann, Sandra J. Lindow, Ajani Brown, and others.

You can purchase this volume from Aqueduct now, at http://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-113-1.php.

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10-- Call for materials

 Call for Materials

 The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10:  Social Justice (Redux), will be edited by Margaret McBride. She has issued the following call for materials:

"One thing I admire in Ursula K. LeGuin's writing is her willingness to publicly examine and change her way of seeing the world and her fiction (as in Tehanu, published almost 20 years after The Earthsea Trilogy or the 1976 "Is Gender Necessary?" followed by the 1989 "Redux" version of that essay). I hope The WisCon Chronicles 10 Social Justice (Redux) authors will have the same attitude, for we seem to bring up problems of social injustice so often.  Mary Anne Mohanraj, who edited The WisCon Chronicles 9,  focused on social justice issues in her introduction, as did several included essays. The fiction and WisCon 39 guest-of-honor speeches by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson focused on multiple aspects of social justice: environmental collapse, need for reduced population, and climate change; violence against women; racial inequality in publishing and elsewhere; gender issues, including reproductive rights; inequality of income and power; etc. Yet current newspapers or blogs about Ferguson or gay marriage or our own science fiction community show that we must continue to address such issues in fiction and elsewhere (I hope in WisCon Chronicles 10!). The "redux" aspect of the volume might include essays on how terms used in debates about social justice could be problematic.

"I am particularly interested in how science fiction is addressing social justice, especially the idea that environmental programs need to include equality for women and minorities. Essays examining the fiction of any past guest of honor at WisCon or Tiptree Award winner or any science fiction that looks at environmental concerns or diversity issues would be appropriate, also. 2016 will be the 40th year for WisCon, so personal memories from guests of honor, committee members, and also people new or long-time to WisCon will be considered, even if not linked directly to social justice issues.

"Please submit essays, personal remembrances, poetry, short fiction for consideration by September 30, 2015 to mcbride@uoregon.edu."