In which Cynthia gives the Vogons a run for their money

Spam poetry. Does it need any other explanation?

I was actually moved enough, by Cynthia Mershark

My brother suggested I might
give birth to clouds
by way of my cousin.

He persistently kept
my first roommate, Susanne.

Where can I find
the place you’re getting your
brain dead individuals?

Spam poetry never sleeps

Cynthia’s offering du jour:

Je suis un débutant à ce forum, by Cynthia Mershark

I ultimately stumbled upon
2 types of people:
well-informed people
I don’t believe
and people trying to decide between
what you are stating and
someone with a little originality

Are you finding
a few genuine thoughts
today?

I’ve been exploring
and you are just
complaining, but sluggish

Is this still accurate?

Offered without further explanation

Another week, another outpouring from the fountainhead.

.

make us electronicy and laugh, by Cynthia Mershark

The entire glance of
your work is so dignifying

It seems that you are really
familiar with hitting memorable images from the endowed

i like it because i have a problem in understanding
the meaning of a white wedding dress
lying below a person’s gorgeous foot.

C’est quelque chose qui est très important
always so explicative

I think I can harvest these

please continue the gratifying

It’s 2013. This type of conversation shouldn’t still be necessary.

My friend and ASIM colleague Patty Jansen has a recent post on her blog about attitudes towards women writing hard SF. It’s well worth reading, but it shouldn’t be. This should have stopped being an issue 40 years ago, or more.

What is ‘this’?

In a nutshell, it’s the argument that women can’t write hard SF. Or they can write it, but they shouldn’t. Or they should, but they shouldn’t expect it to sell, because no-one will read it. Patty’s take on the matter, as a hard SF writer who happens to be a woman, is that the aforementioned argument is thoroughly outmoded, and just plain wrong. And yet, outdated viewpoint or not, it’s still out there, as Patty’s post makes plain. (And I should make plain, here, that I’m commenting more on the generalities of the interface between women and hard SF than on the particulars of Patty’s case. Patty’s perfectly capable of fighting her own battles, and of stating her case.)

I suppose the goalposts have shifted slightly over the past decades. A couple of generations ago the argument would have been that women couldn’t write SF full stop–an argument pretty much invalidated by Ursula Le Guin, by C. L. Moore before her, and by a plethora of other female SF writers before or since. There is, now, much more acceptance of female authorship (and readership) of SF than was the case decades ago. But it’s true that the particular bastion of hard SF has remained a predominantly male preserve, in the public’s perception at least.

It’s weird, quite frankly, that this should be so.

I don’t know a large number of women writers of hard SF (and by ‘hard SF’ I mean SF that pays fairly careful attention to scientific plausibility, including, where appropriate, both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences), but I do know they’re out there, and in my opinion they bring something fresh to the mix. Plus, if we’re in an era when most biology students are female, most chemistry students are female, it’s no longer unusual to find women studying mathematics or physics or engineering … surely, surely, we should by now have stopped baulking at a female presence in hard SF.

I was going to rattle off a list of female hard SF writers of my acquaintance but, as noted above, I don’t know many. Which is a pretty woeful state of affairs, and one I’m keen to shift. (I think the only books on my shelves that would count as hard SF by female writers–other than Patty’s own YA novella, The Far Horizon–would be Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson, and Uncharted Territory by Connie Willis. Oh, and Marjorie Bradley Kellogg’s duology, The Wave and the Flame and Reign of Fire.) So, taking a leaf out of  Tsana Dolichva’s book (if that’s not, in the circumstances, a singularly misleading metaphor), I’m setting myself a Reading Challenge.

My particular challenge to myself is to find, and read, and review, five hard SF novels by five different female writers, before year’s end. I suspect I should start out with something by Catherine Asaro, whom I somehow had never heard of (or at least had never connected with hard SF) until about a month ago … but I’d welcome pointers towards books by other writers who meet the criteria (ideally either hard SF novels, or short story collections in which a good majority of the stories are hard SF). So feel free to name-drop in the comments. I’m especially interested in novels published in the last few years. And while scientific plausibility is important to me in this regard, so is strength of characterisation, elegance of plot, and poignancy of tale.

(Note, though, that it is only hard SF that I’m looking for. I count Ursula Le Guin and Lois McMaster Bujold among my top few favourite SF authors, but they’re not really writers of hard SF, for the most part.)

I won’t necessarily stop at five. I was, initially, going to make it ten, but I’m wary of the ability of time pressures to creep up and ambush me, so five seems like a safer bet, for now.

A couple of ASIMish announcements

First, ASIM 57 is out, edited by Lucy Zinkiewicz. It has some breathtakingly beautiful stories in it–I’m particularly impressed by Ferrett Steinmetz’s ‘Shoebox Heaven’, by Crystal Lynn Hilbert’s ‘The Minutiae of Being Dead’, and by Jacob Edwards’ ‘Luminaries’. Cassie Beasley’s ‘Rites of Passage’ is pretty darn good too. You can find the ASIM website post on it here. And you can purchase a copy at the website here. (The cover is by the consistently excellent Kathleen Jennings.)

Second, following the release of this year’s Sir Julius Vogel Awards shortlist, ASIM (with the authors’ kind permission) has made available, for free download, an ebook of the two shortlisted stories that featured in the magazine last year: Dan Rabarts’ ‘Paint By Numbers’ (issue 55) and Grant Stone’s ‘Better Phones’ (issue 56). The ebook is available in pdf, epub, and mobi formats, and you can find it here.

Coming soon, to an alternative-universe cinema near you

“I might have believed six impossible things before breakfast, or I might only have believed five. To tell you the truth, I kinda lost track. You gotta ask yourself, punk, ‘do I feel lucky?’ “

(from the upcoming movie Dirty Humpty)

Just another Mershark monday

If the following makes no sense to you, some context may be provided by my earlier posts here and here.

If, after that, it still makes no sense to you, some additional context may be garnered from the announcement that I compiled this fresh from attending (and doing a reading in) the Conflux 9 Romance Gauntlet, an evening replete with innuendo, suggestion, linguistic flirtatiousness, and–thanks to yours truly–squidultery.

If, then, it still makes no sense … sorry, can’t help you. I can only work with what I’ve got.

.

I will immediately grasp your RSS, by Cynthia Mershark

I am a giant
magnificent
truly unique
famous and very talented

I am regular

I realized that I could get
lovers worldwide

i always say
you are one of the coolest
girlfriends of politicians
i ever saw

You may be possible to preserve
like country music

Weird commentary will give you the
dulcet article
for pretty long time

One thing what I noticed
a company which offers to dramatically increase your
genuinely pleasant
package

I was lucky enough to find
some splendid
leading points of swimwear

luscious hotels
will widen one’s
extraordinary clients
for such easy task

These guys are pretty fast, for sure

So I ordered this
it was very hard
This is the amount

look I was dreaming
I was searching
I was stunned

I think that you will agree
simple is best