Day: July 14, 2019

Mini-Review – Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year, Volume Thirteen

Published on by James MiltonLeave a comment

BSFFYearVolXIII

The first thing I read after deciding to put writing aside for a month of revivifying recreational reading was The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Thirteen, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

According to the introduction, this is the final volume in this anthology series. Colour me sad. This has been my favourite of the annual “best of” anthologies. I can and will follow Jonathan Strahan to his subsequent projects, but I’ll miss this one.

The anthology is exactly what it says on the tin: a collection of 29 stories published during 2018 gathered into one volume. My tl:dr review would be: it’s excellent; read it.

My longer review won’t be too much more substantial. I didn’t have time to take mountains of notes and deliver a vast, sweeping report. I just transferred the contents list to my bullet journal and, as I read, I left a highlighted the title of a good story in yellow and a great story in green. If the story were just fine, but not that special, it stayed unhighlighted. No stories ended up warranting a possible red highlight for actual badness, happily.

How did the anthology go?

  • Fine: 31%
  • Good: 28%
  • Great: 41%

Technically, three of the stories I rated as “fine” left me cold. I didn’t finish them. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to red highlight them. They were clearly well-executed short stories. They weren’t “bad”—just not to my taste.

Even so, it seems to me that 69% of stories in a volume being good to great is a solid hit rate, and the rest were, I stress again, nevertheless overwhelmingly an enjoyable read. I’d account myself very satisfied, overall.

Naming names, I would say the outstanding fantasy story in the collection is Garth Nix’s The Staff in the Stone. It was a really engaging high fantasy that crammed an awful lot of what’s good about that genre into a small space.

The outstanding science fiction story, for me, was Simone Heller’s utterly brilliant When We Were Starless, which was brilliantly written, sad, and hopeful.

Special mention for transcending categories of goodness has to go to Ursula LeGuin’s short Earthsea story, Firelight—which was wonderful and sad for many reasons.

Other recipients of the green highlight of general greatness were:

  • Mother Tongues, S. Qiouyi Lu
  • The Woman Who Destroyed Us, S. L. Huang
  • A Brief and Fearful Star, Carmen Maria Machado
  • Field Biology of the Wee Fairies, Naomi Kritzer
  • A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, Alix E. Harrow
  • Okay, Glory, Elizabeth Bear
  • The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society, T. Kingfisher
  • If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again, Zen Cho
  • Nine Last Days on Planet Earth, Daryl Gregory

All of that said, I can only repeat my earlier summary that the anthology was a splendid year’s best, well worth the reading and your recreational dollar.

Overdrawn at the Writing Well

Published on by James MiltonLeave a comment

Well

Of all the writing advice out there, top three are probably writers write, writers read, and show, don’t tell.

Well, I do write. Normally, I say this with my fingers crossed while thinking: Hey, academic writing counts. I’m just coming off my BA Sociology honours year and the first six months of my PhD candidature, both of which involve reading and writing a lot.

But, let’s face it, writers write and writers read are talking about the fiction or non-fiction that you love to write or read, in my case the speculative genres—fantasy, science fiction, horror. Those I’ve not been doing so well with, and haven’t been for some time.

I try to write, constantly, but it’s been increasingly a slog. I read so sporadically that rounding the amount down to zero doesn’t do much injustice to the actual number.

What do I read when I’m not reading academic material? Books and blogs on writing. What do I watch in spare moments? YouTube videos on writing.

Last week, I sat down with a problematic story I’m halfway through writing, determined to fix its plot before continuing. This was the third time I’d done that with this story. I’d broken it down into scenes, rearranged them, brainstormed alternatives, created and recreated the characters. I suddenly realized I had more than 6000 words of notes on what I’d estimated would be a 6000-word story… and, well, it struck me.

My creative well is probably a bit of a wreck. No fiction to replenish it and way overstuffed with all that writing advice that judges, rejudges, and damns every word, sentence, and paragraph as it emerges. Stories begin to drag themselves out of me only to be clubbed to death by my inner how-to-write monster. I’m all knowledge and no art.

So, I’m going to try to readjust my balance. No fiction writing for a month. No drawing from the dry well. No reading how-to-write books or blogs and no how-to-write videos until further notice. I’m keeping my scheduled writing time, but I’m using it for recreational reading.

Hopefully, in a month (or two if I deem it advisable to go again), I’ll see a little glitter of water down in the creative well and feel happy to send down a bucket.