The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019, pt. 22: Kate Boyes

Not Knowing What Comes Next
by Kate Boyes

 “The only thing that makes life possible
is permanent, intolerable uncertainty;
not knowing what comes next.” --Ursula K. Le Guin 

This year has been a wild ride, with Fate smirking at me from the far end of the teeter-totter and jumping off the board a few times when I reached high points. Many of my plans for 2019 had to be ditched early in January when a series of health issues hit me that lasted until autumn. More plans were sidelined when I began caring for a loved one as he went through two rounds of brain surgery, weeks of recovery, and months of anxiety before he found out the procedures were successful.

Maybe the constant uncertainty explains why I was so moved—jolted, really—when I heard a snippet of “Love Like There's No Tomorrow”playing on the radio in one of the hipper medical waiting rooms I visited this year. The song, by The War and Treaty, is from their Healing Tide album. The duo's music is raw, electrifying, and oddly comforting. Some of their songs are a fusion of jazz, blues, and soul; some are 'a little bit country, a little bit rock'n'roll.' They have a compelling backstory about creating music as a way to recover from the trauma of war, and although I delighted in other music (Synthesis, by Evanescence, for example), being introduced to The War and Treaty was a random gift.

 My need for more rest was a backhanded gift, one that gave me more than the usual amount of couch time for viewing pleasures. Narrowing my list of 2019 visual delights to the top ten has been difficult, but here they are, listed in no particular order.

She Sings to the Stars is a film about water, miracles, and the power of an intimate connection between people and place. I was impressed, most of all, by the director's ability to match the style and pacing of the film to its subject—life in the desert.

Undone, an animated series that stars Rosa Salazar and relies heavily on rotoscoping, drew me in with its realistic characters and then cleverly tied my brain in ever-tighter knots when the protagonist began moving in and out of time.

If you haven't seen Gallipoli in a while and need a gut-wrenching reminder about the absurdity of war, try the 2017 version of Journey's End.

I discovered The Bell, the Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy playing on loop at the Portland Museum of Art during a surgery-related visit to what we in Oregon call The Big City, and I lost track of the number of times I watched this mesmerizing film in one sitting. Colonialism, the decay of Capitalism, the use of religion as a tool to destroy cultures, alien invasions: I'm not sure what this wordless film is supposed to be about, but it was about all of those and more to me. Highly recommended.

Io: A deadly gas is making life on Earth impossible—perhaps—and most humans have left the planet, but a young scientist thinks she has found a way to stay and adapt. Yes, there are technical issues with the gas in question; yes, Anthony Mackie deserved a better role than that of sperm donor; but the film's suggestion that we might be a tad too quick to give up on the old in our quest for the new and shiny has stayed with me.

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, the American Masters documentary: I cry every time I watch it.

Yesterday: Beatles, then no Beatles, then all Beatles all the time, plus Kate McKinnon at her creepy best. This is the only film I saw at a regular movie theater in 2019, and I was seated next to a young child who knew the words to every song and who danced in the aisle through most of the show. In the midst of uncertainty, a child dancing with joy gave me hope.

Bird Box: Any film that combines aliens, visual impediments, river running, and Sandra Bullock is tailor-made for me.

Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale is set in the early 1800s in what is now Tasmania, where an Irish woman has been sent to serve her sentence for a minor offense. She does her time, but the British commander, who has no moral compass, refuses to release her. The film is brutal, intensely disturbing, and brilliant.

There are only nine visual delights on this list so far because I'm going to fudge a bit and count the entire vid party at WisCon as the tenth. Yes, my biggest plan for this year was to attend WisCon, something I had never done but had wanted to do since a nanosecond or two after the Big Bang. A prudent person would have ditched that plan at the onset of the first health issue. I didn't. Stubbornly, I kept making travel arrangements, paying for flights I wasn't sure I would be able to take, refusing to take a prescription that would have made me feel better but would have made travel more difficult. Uncertainty, for sure.

I went, and it was amazing. (Note to those who have heard the ravings of too many WisCon newbies: feel free to skip this paragraph.) Most conferences I've attended attract those for whom the event is little more than a perfunctory step on the path to tenure—although one did include a moment when dozens of professors tried to dance the macarena, bless their hearts. But WisCon.... I had never seen so many kind, caring, knowledgeable, articulate, passionate, fun-loving people in one place, nor had I ever attended a conference that was so carefully planned. The days were filled with delicious sensory overload. I felt accepted, able to express my opinions without reproach, even (gasp) that I'm not particularly fond of the work of Benedict Cumberbatch. I expect WisCon is the closest I will come to experiencing an alternate reality or a parallel universe.

The vid party was a high point. I was impressed by the skillful pairings of songs and movie or TV clips: some were funny, some incisive, and most were both. My favorite, by bironic and included in the 'Sing Along' section, paired the octopus-like main character from It Came from Beneath the Sea with the song “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid to create a gem about the Other. If you didn't make it to the party, or if your heart is strong enough to relive it, you can find the vids at wiscon-vidparty.dreamwidth.org.

Waiting: I did a lot of it this year, and it gave me so much time to read that I needed to expand my top ten reading delights of 2019 to a baker's dozen. I began the year reading work by authors I thought I might meet at WisCon. The Weave, by Nancy Jane Moore, is a great story and a master class in building a world and introducing readers to it; by the end of the novel, I was thinking in a new way. Jackie Hatton's Flesh & Wires prompted me to consider questions about what constitutes a violation of the body and about how much—and in which ways—we can change and still be human. I liked the story and politics in the Outspoken Authors edition of Eleanor Arnason's Mammoths of the Great Plains; the ghost story she read at WisCon was the funniest thing I heard there. I read Stories of Your Life and Others because a friend gave it to me, not because I expected to run into Ted Chiang at WisCon; then a quiet man asked to sit next to me during the book signing event, and it was him.

After Carol Emshwiller died, I re-read The Mount and Ledoyt (one of my favorite westerns) and was once again impressed by her ability to write books that are so completely different and still equally powerful. An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon, is startling, claustrophobic, scalpel sharp, and respectful of those on the autism spectrum. When I was able to write, the ideas in Wonderbook, by Jeff VanderMeer, inspired me; when words felt too heavy to hold, I flipped through the pages and was inspired by the graphics.

Perhaps I should have waited for a better time to read This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Naomi Klein, a time when I wasn't, like the environment, teetering on the brink of collapse. But I couldn't wait. Naomi's work is a carefully researched and presented reminder that we are all living with permanent, intolerable uncertainty whether or not we admit it or call it by its real name. Then, because sometimes I just don't know when to stop, I plunged right in to The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, by David Wallace-Wells. I recommend both books, but I also recommend taking a quick break between them to come up for air.

I'm still reading my way through the pile of books I acquired after meeting authors and visiting with booksellers at WisCon. Exile, by Lisa M. Bradley, had just been released at the time of the conference, and it is a stunning, gritty-to-the-tenth-power, carnal howl of a book that I couldn't put down. When I heard Gwynne Garfinkle read from People Change, a collection of poems and stories, I was so impressed that I made this book my go-to gift for film- and horror-loving friends. I heard Anne Sheldon read at the conference, too, and I picked up her collection of poems, The Bone Spindle. I'm glad I did: Anne's poetry is as clear, precise, and appealing as the song of a western meadowlark.

The pile of lists and spreadsheets with my plans for next year is growing already. I can't imagine entering a new year, especially one as important as 2020, without them. But if I need to throw them all out, hey, it's no big deal.

 Kate Boyes’ debut novel, Trapped in the R.A.W., was released by Aqueduct Press earlier this year. Kate is also the author of a biography of Paul McCartney, and her nature essays have been published in many anthologies, including two volumes of the American Nature Writing series. She lives on the Oregon coast and falls asleep every night to the sound of the surf.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Llistening in 2019, pt. 21: Mark Rich

Readings and Re-Readings, 2019
by Mark Rich

I have just started reading works by one whose name will ring a bell for none, in all likelihood.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond, who wrote for piano and voice, may remain forever obscure. Yet the publisher who brought out this that I am reading, a collection of thirty songs that I found at an estate sale, called her America's foremost woman composer —— likely not a false claim, even though I imagine that, in the early 1900s, more than a few women might have taken that title, and all with justification. With the problem in post-Modernity that we read almost nothing, any more, comes the reality that few of us read music at piano any more. The two facts add into a world in which no one knows this foremost composer, nor more than one or two out of dozens or hundreds of her compositional contemporaries.

What hardly surprises me is how very poor a reader I am, of Jacobs-Bond. For years now I have daily sat at my Bach —— still not learning any particular preludes or fugues and still working on just being able to read all forty-eight of them. I know that learning some of them better —— perhaps the same ones that I somewhat learned and performed decades ago —— will add a dimension to the pure act of reading not to be ignored. I know this thanks to poetry. These days with poems that I know, not quite backwards but at least forwards, I still reopen books to let the poems speak to me again from the page.

Jacobs-Bonds's songs are relatively simple —— so that learning some seems eminently possible. As I said, though, I am simply reading, for a first time, while often fumbling and mis-stepping and chopping and moaning at myself. Being able to play a Baroque chromatic A-minor prelude at an easy pace means nothing about my being able to step into the wall-papered parlor to sit alongside America's now-antique piano-songsters who could cross their hands behind their backs and still rattle the ivories, scatter musical pansies and posies, and choke you with archipelagos of arpeggios —— while warbling winsomely at the same time, mind you. It may well be that I, with Eliot, "know the voices dying with a dying fall/ beneath the music from a farther room." For the voice is my own, who has dared to enter the velvety realm of the parlor song. It is my own embarrassed and stifled scream as I take my dying fall, falling off the stool and plunging from the stage.

In my pianistic ineptitude I realize how my mind does its best to stick to what it knows —— to the musical rhetoric it knows, to the melodic approaches it knows —— and only most unwillingly unbends to wrap about something different. For this very reason, however, do I undertake this reading. Fairly often in my wanderings I come onto old piano music from the sheet-music days, and feel a bit foolish at being what they call "musical" while yet a clubfoot at that Victorian diversion of musical chairs.

I have encountered a similar situation in reading Dorothy Dinnerstein's 1976 The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. I am but halfway through it, in part because I cannot simply read and turn pages. Not only does she deal in topics about which I am poorly conversant, but she uses, in a way that was obviously comfortable for her, a rhetoric that makes me sometimes stare at a sentence before re-reading it once or twice. Ideas and rhetoric separate themselves only to a degree, I admit. Yet it seems that feeling dim about the former may arise from being dim about the latter —— often unconsciously.

In 1976 I was learning some Bach, as it happens —— but unfortunately not reading him, not any more than I was doing readings in psychology. Psychologists probably have their own rhetoric —— and having grasped that, back then, might have made this book breezier for me, now. All the same, I have valued my experience in it, thus far.

This year, too, I have valued, in full, Randall Jarrell's 1955 Poetry and the Age, which confirmed some thoughts of mine while widening others; and Jacques Barzun's 1958 Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, of which I had read only a third or so, in years previous. I have the odd impression now that I was won over to Barzun's thinking more beforehand than I was after I finally finished the book. Yet his breadth of scholarship and his cogency impress me deeply. My odd impression probably arises from the fact that I now grasp his thinking slightly better than before, and have a few questions. In any case, some intellectual steam found release immediately after reading those two books, when I picked up something utterly different: the 1915 Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship.

I have had reasons for reading and re-reading various books besides a few Tom Swift adventures, including ones by Edith Van Dyne, who was L. Frank Baum, J.M. Barrie, John Kendrick Bangs, and Hugh Lofting. I opened an old Modern Library tome, The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll —— and over the course of a few months ended up reading it all, which included doing some logic exercises. What a refreshingly clear writer he was! The precision extended to his poetry. And this I do respect. For me the highlight of the volume, however, came in the two novels that make up Silvie and Bruno —— a long story, partly a fairy tale, that puzzled and somewhat irritated me at first, but that won me over to its ways, even despite the old-church religious theme that plays into it. (Speak of rhetorical stances!)

In my general reading, several books delighted or impressed me, or both. I took great pleasure in Short Fiction of Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman, edited by Barbara Solomon. In his literary histories Van Wyck Brooks gives Jewett respectful attention, for reasons I now understand. As lengthy as is this 1987 collection, I happily would have read more.

Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter quite surprised me with its sure handling of its sometimes odd and sometimes riveting characters. Another book that I came to late is Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn —— first mentioned to me in 1977 after I cut down a Tree of Heaven at a professor's house. Forty years later . . . If it lacks the visceral power of the McCullers, its picture of a past time and place has many compelling qualities of its own.

A novel that I began with the thought that it might be simply a pleasure to read did float me along buoyantly and warmly, despite the month then being January. How could I not take to a novel in which two characters discover they have memorized, or tried to, the same poems? Apparently this novel launched me into seeking 1940s novels by women —— an unknowing goal accidentally achieved with McCullers and Betty Smith: for Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle first appeared in 1948. Fortuitously, after enjoying it, in a little thrift store that is open once a month down in a valley village near here, I spotted Dodie Smith's more famous work: One Hundred and One Dalmations. I never expected to read that book. I do like it —— while still never expecting to view the Disney flim-flam, except when the unavoidable Little Golden Book version comes to hand.

For pure readerly glow, though, I think that more than I Capture the Castle, this year, I most relished the immersion into childhood in Barrie's 1902 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, which in the old edition that I read has Arthur Rackham illustrations. (Unless it is that I most enjoyed a related immersion, in Silvie and Bruno —— which, it has just occurred to me, might be viewed as a Maugham-esque approach to the fairy tale.)

Last midwinter I took in my sole contemporary novel, one that I purchased at the Aqueduct table the last time I attended Wiscon: Sarah Tolmie's 2014 The Stone Boatmen. I like how certain images loom over the whole, as unresolved mysteries that tie into the novel's action —— which I suppose may aim for the well-composed and quiet movement of a stately court procession; and I like the formalism of its approach, a quality that seems endangered in writing of all kinds these days. I have the minor quibble about a few words that appear in that texture, in that imagined milieu —— particularly "interstice," used several times. A line something like "the interstice between human and chicken" even appears. Since I most often encountered interstices during my fraction of a geology training, with the word denoting the often-microscopic spaces between mineral grains, you may imagine what mental contortions that line puts me through. (I will admit that Tolmie's word was "bird," and not "chicken.") I never quite warmed to the term "interstitial fiction" for a like reason. Fiction to my mind has a measure not quite that small. A larger, more visible space in a rock can take the word "vug," in geology. And so perhaps "vug fiction" or "vuggal fiction" might be more ennobling.

The last few nights, as I write this, I have been reading Jacobs-Bond just after my evening Bach —— which is after happy hour, and thus after wine. Being warmed by Bach may help —— or relaxed by cheer. In any case I have been reading her pieces more comfortably. One —— I think they are all from the period 1901 to 1925 —— suggests to me that she did learn from the examples of such European Romantics as Schumann and Liszt: for the harmonic movement seems true, to me —— if that makes sense. I find it interesting to contemplate her parlor works standing against the triumphalist and materialist Wagnerian excesses of the stage, which held sway in her younger years; and, too, to consider that Eliot wrote "Prufrock" in the years these songs enjoyed popularity. Jacobs-Bond held so prominent a place in that "music from a farther room" that after her beginnings in Janesville, Wisconsin, she ended owning a Hollywood home. The question suddenly seems not irreverent, nor irrelevant: can one know Eliot without knowing, in some way, Jacobs-Bond? His hesitant courtship, his nuanced acceptance in its frustration . . . does not parlor music more than vaudeville or concert-hall tune-stirrings play behind those scenes?

I pursued a fraction of a newspaper life, for a time, much as I acquired a shard of geology education; and an organization whose notices I sometimes edited was the Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs. Does it still exist? It did, in the 1980s; and it did in 1924 when Jacobs-Bond dedicated her "The Golden Key" to the National Federation of Etc. I suppose a type of feminist exists, these days, who looks askance at such organizations as faded and inconsequential. As, perhaps, inadequately self-righteous. As, perhaps, as hesitant in their convictions as the youthful Eliot in his courtship. Yet these groups had consequences, in individual lives. This song provokes my thinking more, however, for its curious "words upon the wall —— 'Your God is Love, and Love brings work, There's Love and work for all.'" Jacobs-Bond's songs appeared while Marxism was gaining a foothold, internationally; this particular one, when Marxism had become an uncomfortable fact of life and a well-accepted way for one to think that one is inarguably right. The main expression in this song, which may be that one's proper work is the work done with joy, has for its own background the parlor noise of a materialist belief: that labor is value. A Marxist songwriter would have capitalized Labor and left love lower-cased. (McCullers's novel, as it happens, moves in the way it does due to some characters being gripped by thinkings that they regarded as Marx's.)

What a lonely, little bastion against materialism is this song! We might think that. Yet parlor music gave a congenial home to such expression. Was the inherited Romantic musical vocabulary sustaining a continued Romantic Vitalism? I feel too dim about both Vitalism and American parlor music to say. We too easily dismiss the sentimentalism evident in American parlor works —— the poetry, the music, the stories —— and whatever else there was. I recently finished the 2008 collection The Spiritual Emerson, edited by Jacob Needleman, and can recommend it as a selection slightly different from than other such volumes. In one essay, "Fate," Emerson says that if thought is freeing, so is the "moral sentiment." I have pondered that combination of two words for a few weeks now, and will continue doing so. I believe Emerson touched on, or perhaps helped create, a perspective that enabled some humanistic thought to persist. The military and industrial megamachine settled into its business-as-now-usual most firmly after his death. So here I am considering whether an emphasis on sentiment was an absolute need, late in the 1800s, early in the 1900s. And moral sentiment is sentiment not dissevered from its source, which is something greater than that which animates the radio music that provides ambient noise and satisfactions for those whose existence falls within the megamachine.

Such questions arise . . . and from yellowed pages that graced a parlor nearly a hundred years ago!

Mark Rich  has had two collections of short fiction published — Edge of Our Lives (RedJack) and Across the Sky (Fairwood) — as well as chapbooks from presses including Gothic and Small Beer. He is also the author of a major biographical and critical study, C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary, published by McFarland. With partner-in-life Martha Borchardt and two Scotties-in-life he lives in Cashton, Wisconsin, and gardens, shovels snow, still reads Bach daily, and remains faithfully behind in his book revisions.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019, pt. 20: Cassandra Rose Clarke

Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019
by Cassandra Rose Clarke

I actually tracked my reading in my bullet journal this year, although not my listening or viewing—ironic, since I felt like I did much more listening and viewing than reading in 2019! I was also surprised by the number of 2019 publications I read; I’ve also felt like I lagged behind in my reading habits.

Regardless, onwards to the year’s standouts!

Reading

Wicked Saints, by Emily Duncan: A YA cosmic horror fantasy love story inspired by Slavic mythology. This one hit so many of my reader buttons it’s not even funny. 

Consuming Fire, by Catherine Fearns: This book is the sequel to Fearns’ Reprobation, about a nun teaming up with a death metal musician to solve a theologically-inspired mystery. In Consuming Fire, Fearns adds a touch of the occult to the mystery. I love the twist on quirky amateur detective series in these books, and in fact, while writing this article I saw that the third book, Sound, is out, and promptly ordered it.

The Twisted Ones, by T. Kingfisher: I feel like this book invented a new genre that I am calling cozy horror. There were sequences that genuinely creeped me out, but at the same time, the main characters (a woman and her dog) are guaranteed to make it to the end of the book safely. It’s also interesting in the way it chooses to engage with a classic horror story (that I have never even read!)

“Buffalograss,” by Jake Skeets: In 2019 I signed up for Poem-a-Day, ensuring that I have a poem waiting for me to read every morning. This poem struck me when I first read it in September, and I still think about it sometimes.

Listening

Titanic Rising, Weyes Blood: Weyes Blood has an absolutely stunning voice, and I’ve loved her music ever since I first heard The Innocents a few years back. Titanic Rising is her latest album and is as shimmery and haunting as anything she’s done. Highlight song: “Andromeda”

Norman Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey: Lana has been My Girl ever since she bombed on Saturday Night Live lo these many years ago. With each release she scrapes away new layers to her persona, revealing the depth and darkness of the Nancy-Sinatra-Meets-Britney-Spears vibe she became known for. Highlight song: “How To Disappear”

Malice of Antiquity, Astrophobos: I love extreme metal as much as I love mournful female singer-songwriters, and this was a standout black metal album for me this year. Visceral, darkly beautiful songs with cosmic horror themes. Perfect for listening to while reading Wicked Saints! Standout song: “Fire of Catharsis”

Viewing

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: This first season technically started in 2018, but it wrapped up in 2019, with Sabrina out-Sataning Satan, much to my delight. I love the campy gothic vibe of this show and the way it somehow manages to make blood sacrifices and selling your soul more innocent than whatever the hell’s going on in Riverdale.

Chernobyl: While watching Chernobyl, I most struck by how the story feels like cosmic horror—except it’s real. There really is an artifact in Russia that killed people simply because they looked at it.The episodes dealing with the actual meltdown were some of the most chilling horror sequences I saw this year.

The Mandalorian: It’s a space western and it feels extremely Star Warsy. The soundtrack is incredible. Baby Yoda is the jewel the world needs. And honestly, the Mandalorian himself is the kind of gentle badass that always makes me swoon a little.

Cassandra Rose Clarke has published eight novels, one collaborative serial, and several short stories and poems. Her novels have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award, and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, while her poetry has placed second in the Rhysling Awards, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appeared in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and elsewhere.  She is currently the acting director for a Houston-based literary arts nonprofit, Writespace. Aqueduct Press will release her long narrative poem, Sacred Summer, in Spring 2020.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019, pt. 19: Rosanne Rabinowitz

The Pleasures of Reading, Watching and Listening
by Rosanne Rabinowitz

It’s that time of year… So here are a few highlights of my reading and watching in 2019; perhaps I’ll spend more time on the ‘listening’ part next year. I’ll stress that this is not a ‘best of’, just a few things that come to mind or stuff that I've tweeted or posted about during the year.

Novels

The Migration Helen Marshall.

In the near future an unknown immune disorder has been affecting young people throughout the world. After Sophie's sister Kira is diagnosed, her family leave Canada to stay with an aunt in Oxford for specialised treatment. But what appears as a disease could herald a transformation... I’ve spent a lot of time in Oxford with my partner there, so I appreciated Marshall’s superb sense of place. She made this Oxford of the future very real. The characters also live on Osney Island, a watery part of central Oxford where one of my favourite pubs in the city happens to be. Now for a little story attached to this book... When Helen read an extract at Fantasycon in 2018 she announced a competition. Whoever cawed the loudest would win a copy of the Canadian edition. This was a big deal because the UK edition wouldn’t be out for about six months. And I cawed! I was desperate – I just couldn't bear the waiting and that desperation must have given my 'caw' its volume and urgency. It could not be denied!

And then I tweeted with joy when I won the prize.

The Dollmaker Nina Allan

We follow the journey of Andrew, a dwarf who is a dollmaker, as he tries to connect with his penfriend Bramber. Bramber, who came into contact with him because of their shared love of dolls, is stuck in an institution in a remote part of Cornwall after traumatic events in her past. A series of stories by Polish author and dollmaker, Ewa Chaplin, also weaves through the book. The Dollmaker is not overtly fantastical but it definitely feels like a fantasy novel – the book is about fantasy itself and how it can impart wonder and hope. It makes me think of Geoff Ryman’s Was in this respect. I loved its mittelEuropa flavour, even in sections set in London and Cornwall. The texture of the prose is rich and evocative. I found myself seeing the book as a film starring Peter Dinklage as Andrew and perhaps Samantha Morton as Bramber and Sophie Okonodo as Andrew's friend Clarence. And there's gotta be a role for Tilda Swinton in there somewhere.

A Spectral Hue Craig Laurence Gidney

The town of Shimmer, Maryland has long drawn a stream of black artists – working in a range of media – who focus on a colour that shifts between purple and pink, the hues of the rare local salt marsh orchid. Graduate student Xavier goes to Shimmer to study the work of these artists, inspired by an encounter with it in his past. He discovers magic in its beauty and also encounters the dark history that gave birth to it, one rooted in slavery and violence. This eerie and weird tale is populated by a memorable cast of queer black characters. It evokes our capacity to create art under terrible conditions and the power of that art to reach through time. As a writer I'm also obsessed with colour imagery and drawn to combinations of purple and pink so I loved this.

The Ten Thousand Doors into January Alix Harrow.

A satisfying portal fantasy, told from the perspective of a biracial girl growing up in a mansion filled with treasures, a mostly absent father and a guardian who treats her as one of his curiosities. But her quiet existence is shattered when she stumbles across a strange book. Each page reveals worlds within worlds and she begins to learn who she is. And the book literally opens doors for her.

What I Loved  Siri Hustvelt

I read this earlier in the year. A book full surprises. It started off as a story about arty nobs in NYC and transformed into a psychological thriller of sorts that explores grief, and meditates on nature and nurture.

Collections

Hollow Shores  Gary Budden

These atmospheric tales focus on the Kent Coast and London and some locations further afield. I loved their invocation of punk pleasures past and present, their sense of place and psychogeography. Some of them might have been unsatisfying on their own but as pieces in this mosaic they add to my understanding of these characters and their world. Generally, I love collections that have a thematic centre and I'm also drawn in by recurring places and characters. It reminds me of some early M John Harrison work, especially Climbers (though the main activity in this is walking). And WTF, I just love stories about old punks wandering about...

Sing Your Sadness Deep Laura Mauro

I was familiar with many of these stories as a subscriber to Black Static, and I've shared space with Laura in an anthology or two. However, it was good to read through them as a varied and captivating body of work. And then there were ones I hadn't come across before. I'd say that the award-winning "Looking for Laika" was worth the price of my ebook alone, and there are many more fine tales such as "When Charlie Sleeps," "Letters from Elodie" and "Ptichka."







TV and film


Years and Years (BBC)

Near-future how-we-live stuff, leaves you laughing and then crying and then very angry. Excellent performances all around, especially from Russell Tovey and Emma Thompson as a right wing populist politician. Here’s a chilling clip that I’ve posted in several online discussions, where Emma Thompson's character gives a spiel about the new detention camps, which reveals how 'concentration' camps first began under the auspices of the British Empire. "The word concentration simply means a concentration of anything... You can fill a camp with oranges and it will be a concentration camp by dint of the oranges being concentrated. It's as simple as that. Made it sound rather tasty! ...They simply let nature take its course. The camps were crowded, pestilent, and rife with disease... You might call it neglect, you might call it efficient.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUPf5GagKF0&t=2s

However, the end of the series didn't quite work. A bit Doctor Who, which is fine in its place . But it wasn't an effective ending for this series – an emotional dystopian drama rooted in current events. It dissipated the very real and present ambiance created by earlier episodes.

The Affair (Showtime)

I didn't think season 5 would be up to much without Ruth Wilson and the first couple of episodes seemed to confirmed that. BUT...

It went kind of SF with a near-future strand about Cole and Alison's daughter, Joanie. With episode 6 I became re-addicted despite some poor dialogue. Singing along with the theme tune is always fun and it lends itself to a bit of interpretive dancing when I need to get steps in. However, I must remember to draw the blinds first!

This unexpected twist in the show reminded me of Years and Years – a combination of relationship drama/family saga & SF – but not as well-written. Most people on Twitter hated the turn it took, but it revived my interest, which had been waning amidst the soapy suds.

Russian Doll Season 1 (Netflix)

A few of have already blogged about this in their Pleasures posts so I'll just briefly say that I enjoyed it. An abrasive, witty time-loop drama. Hope there's a second series.

The Beforeigners (HBO) (European)

I stumbled on this Norwegian time travel drama by accident and got hooked in immediately. I tend to avoid subtitled work on the small screen for eyesight reasons but the subtitles on this appear in big and very visible letters. This is a crucial technical point!

People from the past are suddenly emerging into the present – temporal immigrants in Oslo comes from eras such as the Stone Age, the Viking period and the 19th century. The 'beforeigners' collect in communities with others from their time and bars spring up specialising in their favourite grog. There's some great culture clash comedy, but the serious issues are not far below the surface.

The series follows a former Viking shieldmaiden who becomes a police detective, the first of her background to join the force. She bumps into a former comrade in arms and they have adventures that sometimes conflict with her duties as an Oslo cop investigating murder cases.

One standout scene involves an orientation seminar where an assortment of newly arrived Norse folk (the preferred term to 'Viking') are watching a cheesy 'welcome' video on modern Norwegian life. An argument breaks out between the Christians and pagans in the room.

I enjoyed the approaches to Norse history and myth the most and it may very well come to the fore if there's a second series. The 'tec tropes were fun they didn't absorb me in the same way. But now... St Olav and his killer Thor Hund are now living in modern Oslo. Thor is trying to live a quiet life with his wife & kids in a council flat and a job as a delivery person. Then he's rumbled... and Olav is still up for saintery, Christian crusading, and forcible conversion. Bring it on!

His Dark Materials (BBC)

The first episodes seemed a bit of glossy meh, but later episodes were very powerful.

I enjoyed the differences introduced into the series; for example, more elaboration on Will's background and the way he comes into the story earlier. I read the books back in the early 2000s so I'm a bit vague, but I wondered if the series places more emphasis on the fantasy trope of 'the one' and 'destiny'? If I recall, in the book Will found a door into Lyra's universe just by chance, but now it's part of this destiny set-up too. I've always hated 'the chosen' trope and I just try to ignore it so I can enjoy the series.

I also think there was a bit more SF behind the fantasy in the books. That side is explored in John Gribben's book The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, which I've had on my TBR list for years.

While watching episode 6 of His Dark Materials I had a dose of creepy deja vu. Then I realised that the outfits worn by Lyra and the other girls in the daemon-severing camp are just like the ones we had to wear for 'phys ed' in school (circa 1970s), otherwise known as 'gym suits'. Very appropriate, for the school system at the time was definitely intent on daemon deleting. Vile garments for vile times and places.

Fast Color (film on Netflix)

This film is described as a 'superhero film' in reviews. While formidable powers come into play, I found it much more quiet and contemplative. I'm not at all a superhero fan. I get bored with repetitive fight scenes even in the better ones like Black Panther

Generations of black women in a particular family have the ability to disintegrate objects into their atomic components and put them back together again. It's more than that – they are able to "see the colors" after performing these acts, indicating a universal connection and journey as well as a handy bit of sub-atomic DIY. The ability is blocked in the main character, resulting in lack of control and destructive consequences to her powers. She has to revisit her past in order to connect with this ability.

The numinous significance of color in this film and the centrality of black characters reminded me a lot of the novel A Spectral Hue, mentioned earlier in this piece. Its feel and some of its concerns are similar too.

Dark S2(Netflix)

Impulse S2 (YouTube).

Finally, this year brought long-awaited second seasons of the German time-traveling drama Dark, as well as Impulse and its teleporting teenage heroine. Both of these were excellent, though I didn't feel quite the same level of thrill and wonder that the first series brought.

With Dark I picked up some German. Ich bin Du. I am you – declared several times. You can guess what's going on there! Paradox aplenty.  

Impulse is a rare thing – a sequel that is superior to the original. The series carries on from a mediocre action film called Jumper, also about teleporting folks. There were some engaging concepts there, such as a centuries-long struggle between religious authorities and those who have this ability. However, the film featured lots of fight sequences and little story. In the UK we joked that the follow-up would be called Cardy.

Instead, we got Impulse, and I'm glad for it. We meet the daughter of the bloke in Jumper, who is growing up in a working class community in Washington State with her sister and her struggling single Mom.

This series hasn't received much attention, but it deserves a wider audience. Unlike its predecessor, it addresses issues such as class and sexual violence through the eyes of a complex protagonist. While series 2 does indulge in melodrama and lose its thread in places, it proved satisfying. I hope there is a third series.

Rosanne Rabinowitz is a London-based author of speculative fiction. Her debut collection Resonance & Revolt was shortlisted for the 2018 British Fantasy Award and her earlier novella Helen's Story received a Shirley Jackson Award nomination. Her Brexit and Oscar Wilde-inspired weird tale All That is Solid is now available as a chapbook from Eibonvale Press. She spends a lot of time drinking coffee – sometimes whisky – and listening to loud music while looking out her tenth-floor window.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2019, pt. 18: Cynthia Ward

2019 in Review:  Women Highwaymen and Others
by Cynthia Ward

It's been a year too draining to do more than read a few pages, here and there.  Still, I did finish a few things.

"Stand and Deliver!" (Books and Magazines)

Graphic Novel:

Bingo Love by Tee Franklin (writer) and Jenn St-Onge (artist) - While it opens in the future, this beautiful graphic novel is a non-speculative romance which follows two women across the decades of their lives since they met in '63.

Anthologies and Magazines:

AfroSFv3 edited by Ivor W. Hartmann - An excellent, space-themed science fiction anthology by African authors, focused on classic tropes (interstellar travel, space colonies, aliens, etc.); my full-length review may be found in The Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction edited by Brit Mandelo - A strong literary anthology whose contents I found rather at odds with my expectations, given its title and subtitle (there are indeed stories with trans or genderqueer characters, but also stories centered on cis bisexuals, and stories I can only call mainstream).

Space Pioneers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio - An anthology of classic mid-20th-Century hard science fiction  and emulations thereof, punctuated by ham-fisted editorial attacks on "feminist" and "liberal" straw men--it's unfortunate the editors, who want to keep the SF they love alive for the future, have little idea how to present it to the present.

StoryHack Action & Adventure #1 - A promising first issue for this new pulp magazine; my favorite story is Jay Barnson's "Retrieving Abe," which features a frontier Mormon co-wife who depends as much on wits as weaponry in her dragon-hunting.

Novels and Novellas:

A Woman of the Road (The Honest Thieves Trilogy Book 1) by Amy Wolf - The fun, fast-paced adventures of Megs, the taverner's daughter who dresses as a man and takes up highway robbery to avoid an unwanted marriage.

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer - I followed Wolf's novel with a re-read of Heyer's delightful historical romance about a cross-dressing brother and sister on the lam, which might also be considered a woman highwayman novel.

Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield - Next, I randomly opened this eBook to kick off my 2019 Nebula Awards reading, only to discover it's the story of another woman highwayman (and her woman scientist lover/accomplice)--and a very good and rather steampunky novella it is, too (though it ends on a cliff-hanger, which I hope is resolved by the sequel, Alice Payne Rides).

The Mazarinette and the Musketeer by Heather Rose Jones - What with all the gender-bending and highway robbery, I knew it was time to re-read this enjoyable alternate-history caper novella about cross-dressing women and a trans Musketeer (and you can enjoy it, too, with a free download).

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark - No highway robbery here, but this excellent, steampunky alternate history features a female airship captain, the pocket-picking orphan who wants to join her pirate crew, a feral child, a Haitian scientist, uncanny nuns, African gods, and the swamp-dwelling rebels plotting to destroy Free New Orleans.

Point of Honour (Sarah Tolerance Book 1) by Madeleine E. Robins - Down these mean Regency streets a woman must go who is not herself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid, but a smart, square-dealing "agent of inquiry" with a penchant for swashbuckling and cross-dressing; I shall be reading the sequels post-haste.

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope - All these buckled swashes inspired me to re-read this classic novel, which gave the Ruritarian adventure genre its name (and which is less sexist than you might expect of a book first published in 1894, although that's not to say it can't piss you off).

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall - This Weird and witty new novel (2019) transmogrifies Sherlock Holmes into a homicidal cis lesbian sorceress and Dr. John H. Watson into an honor-bound gay trans man, in a world where Lovecraftian fish-people coexist with the King in Yellow--I'm typically not keen on the Sherlock's-a-sociopath cliché, yet this is as delightful a read as I've encountered in years.

A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen Series Book 1) by K.J. Charles - This erotic gay Regency romance novel is good, dirty fun, which makes it only sadder that the intriguing subplot involving the English democracy movement is ultimately dropped; I'm hoping it finds resolution elsewhere in the series.

Proper English by KJ Charles - A racially and sexually diverse Edwardian F/F romance that avoids the usual long, maddening wait for the lovers to realize they belong together--and it has a drawing-room mystery that might have won a nod from Dame Agatha Christie (the diverse M/M semi-sequel, Think of England, is also quite strong).

Trail of Lightning: The Sixth World Book One by Rebecca Roanhorse - If this post-apocalyptic selection seems rather jarring after the above adventures in swordplay and/or robbery and/or sex, rest assured the novel has plenty of action, a girl-meets-boy romance, and a Navajo lead whose monster-hunting activities demonstrate she's equally adept with firearms and blades.

A Little Light Mischief: A Turner Novella by Cat Sebastian - No monster hunters or highwaypersons, but you'll find romance and jewel thieves in this delightful lesbian Regency caper.

Black Dog: Bannon's Gym Book 1 by Cat Grant - No jewels or swords, but this thoughtful contemporary M/M romance mixes martial arts with a theme of family, birth and chosen.

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite - A sharp lesbian historical romance in which one of the leads is a scientist, giving the novel a pleasant spec-fic feel.

My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh (who also writes as Zoe Archer) - A fun Regency novel about a pair of geeky scientists (M/F) who mime a romance, which of course doesn't work out as planned.

The Cater Street Hangman - The first book of Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Victorian mystery series is quite good, but I expect a lot of queer readers will be less than pleased with its lone queer character (and won't find out why until late in the proceedings).

Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen - As the thirty-fourth in line for the English throne, the youthful Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie has no money, romantic prospects, or practical skills with which to face Depression London; but she'd better develop the last fast, because Her Royal Highness has dispatched her on an espionage mission.  

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent: A Novel by Marie Brennan - I devoured this delightful first volume of "memoirs" from a woman naturalist in a quasi-Victorian alternate history in which dragons are real and Judaism the dominant faith (although the romance in the novel won't please fans of HEAs).

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - This classic from 1898 is not the first alien-invasion novel, or the first science-fiction horror novel, but it holds up to decades of re-reads very well.

The Green and Growing (Conversation Pieces Book #65) by Erin K. Wagner - Sharing a theme with the Wells novel, Wagner's SF novella insightfully examines how the conquered might subvert the conqueror.

Amberlough and Armistice (Books One & Two of the Amberlough Dossier) by Lara Elena Donnelly - The first two books in a new trilogy beautifully bend gender and genre expectations as they follow a pair of star-crossed lovers, the spy Cyril DePaul and the actor Aristide Makricosta, from a Cabaret-esque fascist takeover to a studio city reminiscent of 1930s Bollywood.

Shadow Man by Melissa Scott - Scott's classic novel of a future which recognizes five genders and nine sexual orientations is thought-provoking and absorbing, but ultimately something of a mixed bag; however, the narrative avoids easy answers, and it went places in 1995 that few fictions visit even today, making it well worth a read or several.

Medusa's Touch by Emily L. Byrne (who also writes as Catherine Lundoff) - While it provides far more of the characters' thoughts than I want, this erotic, cyberpunk-tinged adventure offers tense fun as it follows a love-besotted starship captain into interstellar intrigue.

Undertow: A Whyborne & Griffin Universe Story by Jordan L. Hawk - The author is known for M/M romance, but the first Hawk title I've read turns out to be a fun inter-species F/F erotic romance set in the Massachusetts seaport of Widdershins, which you might read as Innsmouth, though Hawk's bipedal underwater race is descended from sharks instead of fish (the writer J.S. Fields has posted a full review of the novella).

Sisters of the Wild Sage: A Weird Western Collection by Nicole Givens Kurtz - In this excellent first collection from one of my favorite Weird Western writers, the speculative fiction adventures are dark and diverse, upending expectations at every turn.

Wuthering Heights by Emile Brontë - The psychologically astute story of the iconic lovers who blight every life they touch.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - This subtle, disturbing, and possibly queer classic (about a psychological experiment inside a possibly haunted New England house) delineates mental breakdown as well as anything outside of The Bell Jar.

Among the Red Stars by Gwen C. Katz - This young-adult historical novel about the Nachthexen or Night Witches (the female Russian pilots feared by the Nazis) eludes clichés and expectations as it focuses on determined country-girl trainee Valka.

So Lucky by Nicola Griffith - If you're tired of uplifting fiction about poor little helpless crippled victims, designed by able-bodied authors to reassure able-bodied readers, I have just the read for you:  this dark, incisive, genre-bending, award-winning page-turner of a novella.

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout - Re-reading the first Nero Wolfe novel reminds me that I find its lethargic, misogynistic crime-solver unbelievable; perhaps later in the series he evolves into more than a ragbag of irritating quirks and tics.

Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - The sequel to All Systems Red is almost as good as its predecessor, which is merely one of the best novellas I've ever read.

Cynthia Ward has published stories in Analog, Asimov's, Nightmare, Weird Tales, and other magazines and anthologies. For WolfSinger Publications, she edited the diversity-themed anthologies Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West Volumes 1-2. With fellow Aqueductista Nisi Shawl, Cynthia coauthored Writing the Other: A Practical Approach. In March 2020. Aqueduct Press will release The Adventure of the Naked Guide, the third novella in her Bloody-Thirsty Agent series (sequel to The Adventure of the Incognita Countess and The Adventure of the Dux Bellorum).