Episode 105, in which Jonathan joins Gary in achieving ConventionFail by failing to record a single podcast at Continuum 8 (the Australian National Science Fiction Convention), but instead gets to discuss the convention, the Writer & the Critic podcast, the Tiptree awards and Jonathan possibly having said too much elsewhere, and the recent death of Ray Bradbury. All in all, an episode we hope you enjoy. We will be back this weekend with #106, where we hope to have Kij Johnson join us as a guest.
Hmm. While I love The Drowning Girl to pieces and will be very disappointed if it doesn’t make the World Fantasy short list, I don’t think it says much about gender that hasn’t been said in many other books. There’s one paragraph that I highlighted in my review that is brilliant, but equally there are things that may get some trans activists riled up.
2312 on the other hand, is absolutely a Tiptree book.
It’s not only entirely possible but likely that I may not be sufficiently aware or sensitive to trans issues, and so I’ll take your word for it. It still strikes me – a middle-aged white guy – as the sort of book that could/should make the Tiptree. I’ll be interested to see what happens from here.
Loved the podcast, as always, and as a stone Bradbury fan, i was surprised to find that I agreed with everything both of you said about him.
It does seem to me, Jonathan, that you read the wrong Bradbury books for starters! Something Wicked grabbed me just that little bit less than his other famous works, for example, though there are good things in it.
I agree that Bradbury wrote nothing truly significant after approximately 1962, but that’s why I really loved the odd short piece that he wrote later on that did recapture his full brilliance. I’ll give you just one (I know you have to read lots): “Gotcha!”, a story written in 1978 and included almost right at the end of The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980).
A random note: the anthology Gary couldn’t remember was Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow.
On the subject of Sturgeon: Why is there no really satisfactory one volume retrospective of his work, along the lines of the Gene Wolfe Best of three years ago? Is there a bat-signal that will bring our intrepid, rambling Coode editors swooping to the rescue?
Lastly, I agree that we probably won’t see a Big Four again.
However, please note that the Large Four are Ellison, Le Guin, Silverberg and Willis. The tribe has spoken.
I suspect that you just haven’t read as many books with trans characters as I have.