You Should Read This: The Birthday Problem by Caren Gussoff

I had plenty of travel time in August, so yay for reading. My primary focus this month was to read as many of the Dragon Award nominees as I could before voting, but there were a number I just didn’t get to or did not finish. I had read some before, luckily, and am particularly pulling for D.B. Butler’s Witchy Eye, which I loved.

Works that are bolded are ones I found particularly outstanding or otherwise remarkable and would recommend.

Robert Aickman, Cold Hand in Mine
Peter S. Beagle: Summerlong
Betsy Cornwall: Mechanica. I wanted to like steampunk Cinderella, but it didn’t feel very new.
Nathan Crowder: Ride Like the Devil (lots of fun for fellow Seattleites)
Pippa DaCosta, The Heartstone Thief
Robert Dugoni: The Trapped Girl (could have done without the complaints about the various restrictions the legal system places on police officers)
Patrick Edwards: Space Tripping
A.W. Exley: Ella the Slayer (I really did not expect to like Cinderella + zombies).
Kate Elliott: Court of Fives, The Poisoned Blade
Ruthanna Emrys: Winter Tide. If you like Lovecraft novels, you need this one.
Carrie Fisher: The Princess Diarist
Eric Flint: 1636: The Ottoman Onslaught
Amy S. Foster: The Rift Uprising
Theodora Goss: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter FABULOUS and is the 19th century equivalent of Cat Valente’s The Refrigerator Monologues)
Brian Guthrie: Rise
Renee Carter Hall: Huntress (loved this, but book is structured in a frustrating way)
Elizabeth Hand: Aestival Tide, Icarus Ascending
Faith Hunter: Blood of the Earth
Shirley Jackson: Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings. Not enough writing on craft, but what there is, is solid.
Dennis Lehane: Prayers for Rain
Alison Littlewood, The Hidden People
Gabrielle Matheiu: The Falcon Flies Alone. Modern melodrama that pulls from all over the place in a way that is unexpected.
Robert McCammon: Gone South. McCammon is the frickin’ BEST at this sort of novel. Delicious.
Brian Niemeier, The Secret Kings
Richard Paonelli: Escaping Infinity
Lucian Randolph: The God in the Clear Rock (has my vote for most attention paid to a point of view character’s breasts in a book)
Delia Sherman: The Porcelain Dove (very pretty, but the structure makes it feel as though the book evaporates away just as you hit the end)
Shayne Silvers: Beast Masters
Dale Ivan Smith: Empowered: Agent
Safari Spell: Long Live Dead Reckless
Arkadi and Boris Strugatski: The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread
R.R. Virdi: Dangerous Ways
Martha Wells: The Edge of the World

Stuff I’m Watching: Big Brother (yes that’s my guilty pleasure and I don’t know which I loathe more, Josh or Paul), The Defenders, Orphan Black Season 5, Rick and Morty. Watched BRILLO BOX (3¢ OFF), which was an intriguing documentary if you have any interest in Warhol. Also Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story, which I thought was pretty silly.

If you want to explore the deepest roots of fantasy and science fiction, here’s a text that’s been obscured by time: The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, which is one of the first portal stories, in which a protagonist ends up in a world much unlike their own, as well as a Utopian novel. Written in 1666, it features a heroine who enters another realm, the Blazing World of the title, through an entrance located at the North Pole. There, she ends up becoming empress of a harmonious and progressive as well as wealthy kingdom.

Her kingdom is populated by races of talking animals: fox-people, bear-people, bird-people, etc. Eventually she decides to invade her former world, marshaling her forces and marching back to her homeland, using technology from the Blazing World in its defense.

Cavendish, who was the Duchess of Newcastle, evens writes herself into the text:

Hereupon a Councel was called, and the business debated; but there were so many cross and different Opinions, that they could not suddenly resolve what answer to send the Empress; at which she grew angry, insomuch that she resolved to return into her Blazing- World, without giving any assistance to her Countrymen: but the Duchess of Newcastle intreated her Majesty to abate her passion; for, said she, Great Councels are most commonly slow, because many men have many several Opinions: besides, every Councellor striving to be the wisest, makes long speeches, and raise many doubts, which cause retardments. If I had long-speeched Councellors, replied the Empress, I would hang them, by reason they give more Words, then Advice. The Duchess answered, That her Majesty should not be angry, but consider the differences of that and her Blazing-World; for, said she, they are not both alike; but there are grosser and duller understandings in this, than in the Blazing-World.

I found the book through Dale Spender’s excellent Mothers of the Novel, and one reason to read Cavendish is so she doesn’t get lost. So many of the writers Spender touches upon have been obscured, while their male peers remain, and give students the impression that only men were writing. Cavendish was a notable and prolific author of her time as well as an English aristocrat who spent time at the French court. Her life is well worth investigation, full of trials and tribulations as well as triumphs.

Other speculative fiction writers have referenced this book: Alan Moore in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and China Mieville in Un Lun Dun. You can find the book online in its entirety here.

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