The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 1: Octavia Cade

 

Fascinating Reads in 2022

by Octavia Cade

 

I can’t honestly say that 2022 has been an easy reading year. I seem to have fallen behind in my reading goals, and I’ve left a number of books unfinished. They weren’t even bad books. I wanted to finish them, but I just didn’t. There were, however, some books that really stuck out for me—books that basically forced me to finish them, no matter how lazy or distracted I was. Five of them are below.

This isn’t a complete list. Some of them I read for work, some of them I stumbled over at the local library. The books you don’t know you’re looking for, I find, are often the books you end up liking best. In no particular order, then:

 

(1) Homegoing  by Yaa Gyasi. This was absolutely outstanding, and this author’s a must-read for me now. She had an uphill battle, to be honest. Intergenerational, historical family narratives can often be a hard sell for me, as they tend to be longer than I care to tackle. Homegoing, however, created an epic in less than 400 pages: two sisters are separated by the slave trade. One is sold to the United States, the other gets involved with a slaver and remains in Ghana, and the novel follows both families, generation after generation, until they come together again. The considered illustration of trauma, and how it lingers through generations, is just so well done. It’s not an easy read, but it is an enormously compelling one.

(2) Another not-easy read is The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea, by an author known as Bandi. These short stories, smuggled out of the country and into South Korea, are both excellent and horrifying... primarily because they are likely inspired by real life. The story that sticks with me most, I think, is that of the young mother who is punished because, instead of attending a mandatory parade, she chooses to stay home to look after a sick child. I don’t know who the author is. It may well be safer for them if their name never becomes widely known. I do know, however, that they have both enormous bravery and enormous talent. 

 

(3) Challenging in a different way is the ongoing comic series Pretty Deadly, by Kelly Sue Deconnick and Emma Ríos. I’ve read much of the series before, but pitched a last-minute paper to an academic anthology called Visions of Death, which was looking for chapters about death in speculative fiction. These comics, featuring Deathface Ginny, reaper of vengeance and the daughter of Death, are a weird mix of historical fiction, western, and fantasy. What most appeals to me about them, however, is that they are like little puzzle-boxes. Pieces fit together in interesting and reflective ways, and it can sometimes be quite difficult to decipher what’s actually going on. I enjoy that, and I can’t wait for the next volume!

(4) Another paper I wrote this year (forthcoming in Hélice journal early next year) includes a close reading of Locust Girl: A Lovesong by Merlinda Bobis. It’s a sort of magical realist dystopian novel, where a little girl is buried alive in the desert, after her community is destroyed by bombs. She wakes up, ten years later and still the same age, with a locust embedded in her forehead. The locust dreams, and little Amadea is the recipient of those dreams, traveling through a desperately impoverished landscape and trying to reconcile that destroyed environment with the people who scrape a living there. It’s a weird and fascinating book!     

 

(5) Finally, I read a collection of horror short stories by Carlie St. George. You Fed Us to the Roses is clearly heavily inspired by young women in horror films, and each story here follows a girl who could herself be the heroine of a slasher film, as she tries to navigate the tropes and make a life for herself and the people around her. I was absolutely riveted all the way through; this is the best collection I’ve read in ages. I want every horror fan I know to grab a copy and read it for themselves, because the way that these stories illustrate trauma, and (crucially) ways of surviving trauma, is just incredible. I knew the second I’d finished it that this was a book I’d read again and again... I can’t emphasize enough just how good this book is. Walk, don’t run! You’ll love it too.

 

 Octavia Cade is a New Zealand speculative fiction writer and science communicator. She has sold close to seventy stories to markets including Clarkesworld, F&SF, and Asimov's. Her latest book is the climate fiction novella The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, published by Stelliform Press. Octavia attended Clarion West 2016, and will be spending the first half of 2023 as writer in residence at Canterbury University. Aqueduct Press published Octavia's Mary Shelley Makes a Monster in its Conversation Pieces series in 2019, which was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award in the "Superior Achievement in Poetry Collection" category.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2021, part 19: Octavia Cade

 

THE PLEASURE OF READING IN 2021
by Octavia Cade

I’m not sure if “pleasure” is the right word for reading this year. “Necessity,” maybe? Or perhaps “obligation.” Neither of these sounds exciting. As the global experience of pandemic drags on, however, it’s inescapably changing my reading experience. I both want the escapism and lack the concentration for it; I’ve found myself reading less this year, though it could be that the reading itself is taking more effort.

I wonder, though, if the effort is the point. Some books require effort. Not just to understand, if the subject is complex, but to persevere if the subject is revolting. Unquestionably, the finest book I read this year, by a significant margin, was Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington. You make think, from the title alone, that the book is grim reading. I assure you it is worse. I flipped through parts of it last year when researching a story of my own and promised myself I’d give it the attention it deserved this year. That attention was sporadic. There were times I literally flinched from the page, and I could only ever stomach a chapter at a time.

Many times I would have been happy to close the pages forever, but some books are too important to let lie.

I read Medical Apartheid with a friend. It was a good decision. Routinely, one of us would finish a chapter and then reach out to the other with incomprehension and disgust, tempered with absolute admiration for Washington. Her writing is amazing. I have slogged through some dreadful science and science history writing in my time, but Washington’s prose is never less than riveting. I have a PhD in science communication and hers is outstanding: a model to follow in communication and ethics both.

It is not, however, escapism. Nor, I think, is my favorite speculative fiction read this year: the recently published Foxhunt by New Zealand writer Rem Wigmore. It’s an argument for predation, even in societies that have developed into what are largely sustainable and compassionate communities. Well. Perhaps “argument” is less accurate than “acknowledgement”: the idea that the predatory instinct exists, and will not cease to exist in human interactions, and the way to navigate such predation is to channel it to productive purpose. It’s a fascinating story, much more gently confronting than my nonfiction read of the year, but it’s no coincidence, I think, that science and medicine, in both books, is the refuge of those who would hurt others, and exploit them for gain.

Is it the experience of pandemic that makes these books speak so strongly to me? The presence of prejudice and politics and science, how they come together in ways that are both beneficial to some and absolutely toxic to others. I don’t think there’s an exact correlation here, and I have no time for anti-vaxxers, so please don’t wander off believing that I think vaccines are giant experiments on the gullible unwitting, because I don’t. I can see, though, I think, how distrust develops, how it is shaped, and how deserved it can be.

And that, perhaps, is worth the effort.

 

Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer with a PhD in science communication. She's sold around 60 stories to markets such as Clarkesworld, Asimov's, and F&SF. Her latest book is the climate fiction novella The Impossible Resurrection of Grief from Stelliform Press. She's won four Sir Julius Vogel awards for speculative fiction, and she was the 2020 writer in residence at Massey University. Aqueduct Press published her long poem, Mary Shelley Makes a Monster in 2019.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019, pt.11: Octavia Cade

Favorite Reads of 2019
by Octavia Cade

 Goodreads tells me that, as of writing, I have read 241 books this year. Some of them were longer than others. Some of them were better. The two are not often connected – while I try to read as widely as possible, my personal preference is for speculative fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, and horror, and the first of these, especially, tends to doorstopper length. I have increasingly little patience with books the size of bricks, but that doesn’t mean I don’t come across the odd one worth the word count. More of that later.

Anyway, 241 is a lot of books to choose from. And because it can be hard to compare different genres, I thought I’d pick the four most interesting books I’ve read this year, knowing that they’re not really comparable. They’ve not all been published this year, though one of them has. They may not even be the most enjoyable books I’ve read this year, certainly, though I think they’re the ones which will have, and will continue to have, the biggest influence on me; on the way that I think and the way that I write.

So, fiction first. The most interesting general fiction book I’ve read this year is the oldest of the bunch. First published in 1989, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of those doorstopper exceptions. I’ve read one or two of Irving’s books before and was largely indifferent to them, but with Owen Meany I was riveted. The construction of it was just so seamless, and the emotional punch at the end was incredible. I adored it.

My favorite speculative fiction book was quite, quite different – a novella written by a friend of mine, Andi C. Buchanan. From A Shadow Grave only came out six weeks or so ago, but as we’re part of the same writing group I’d read drafts of it before and quietly gone away to gnaw on my own prose in abject jealousy of theirs. Andi’s writing is just gorgeous, and they use a historical murder at the center of their novella. They story, set in Wellington, New Zealand, takes as inspiration the death of seventeen year-old Phyllis Symons, whose body was dumped at the construction site of Victoria Tunnel. Her ghost is said to haunt the Tunnel, and even today there is a tradition of people honking their car horns as they pass through it, to either ward off the poor girl or to simply acknowledge her. Anyway, Andi re-imagines a number of futures for Phyllis, both in afterlife and actual life, after a rescue that never came. It’s beautifully written and, like Owen Meany, so well constructed that I couldn’t put it down.

My favorite piece of speculative nonfiction was Space Sirens, Scientists and Princesses: The Portrayal of Women in Science Fiction Cinema by Dean Conrad. I actually reviewed this for Strange Horizons, and it has stayed with me. Primarily, I think, because of the clarity of the prose. This is an academic book, written by an academic, yet Conrad avoids the terrible, turgid prose that often comes out of academic work. It’s absolutely accessible, and – given some of the academic writing disasters I have come across this year, the less said of them the better – is a very welcome change. Conrad’s conclusion is that the way women are presented in science fiction cinema is largely cyclical. That presentation goes through stages of breaking-out and originality, followed by consolidation and satire. It is extremely well-illustrated with examples of the genre, with special attention being given to Ellen Ripley, Princess Leia, and Dr. Zira from Planet of the Apes.

The best book I read this year though, easily beating out even these wonderful texts, was Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. It is ruthlessly well-researched, absolutely terrifying, and should be required reading for everyone. It’s also the size of a brick, but sometimes you have to push through because the length is justified. There’s not a wasted word here, not a fraction of a meandering off-topic, and such focus is chilling. As it should be. Climate change is a clear and present danger, and the refusal to recognize it as such is supported by far too many people. If you haven’t read this yet, get yourself down to your local library. It’s not pleasant reading, but it’s necessary.

Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer. Aqueduct Press published her second poetry collection, Mary Shelley Makes A Monster, this fall. The first, Chemical Letters, about a woman who spends her afterlife trapped in an apartment building modeled after the periodic table, was published by Popcorn Press and nominated for an Elgin award. Her stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Shimmer, as well as lots of other places. She’s won three Sir Julius Vogel awards for speculative fiction writing. She attended Clarion West 2016 and will be the 2020 writer-in-residence at Massey University/Square Edge.

Octavia Cade's Mary Shelley Makes a Monster

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Mary Shelley Makes a Monster by Octavia Cade, the seventieth volume in our Conversation Pieces series, in both print and paperback editions.  You can purchase it now at www.Aqueductpress.com, where you you can also read a sample from the book,



Mary Shelley Makes A Monster is a series of fantasy-biographical poems in which Mary Shelley’s monster, bereft of its foster mother after Shelley’s death, goes searching for a replacement. All our monsters are mirrors. And when Mary Shelley’s monster—built from her life rather than her pen, born out of biography instead of blood—outlives its mother, that monster goes looking for a substitute. But all the monster really knows of women is that women write, and so the search for a replacement takes it first to Katherine Mansfield, and then to other women who know what mutilated things can be made from ink and mirrors….