New blog for a while

As much as I like this Blogger page, I'm now blogging over at: carolryles.net

Some Links To Look At

Bruce Sterling talks about Steampunk: The Users Guide to Steampunk (Thanks to Jay Lake)

The people at NASA think a patch of ocean near Perth, Australia would be an ideal spot for a Space Elevator

Book View Cafe is here. An online smorgasbord of out-of-print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable work from over 20 authors including some of my favourites, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda N. McIntyre, Sarah Zettel and Aussie, Sylvia Kelso.

Baby Wattlebird Leaves the Nest

The baby bird flew away yesterday. It was great watching her get bigger, venture out onto the branch and then just flutter away. Here's a pic I took a couple of days before while mum was still feeding her. If you click on the pic and make it bigger you'll see the baby bird with its beak sticking up just behind the small branch in front of its nest.



Her tree was getting a tad crowded, now that it's in full bloom. I refuse to buy a leaf blower, so it looks like I'll be out sweeping the truckloads of petals that are going to end up on the driveway. They look pretty, but turn the driveway a slushy brown if left for too long. Good for the arm muscles

Wattle Bird's Nest

This week a couple of wattle birds have been checking out our back patio, much to our cat's consternation (she's afraid of birds). But, in the end, they chose the Jacarada tree outside my upstairs study window. In a week or two I won't be able to see the nest any more because the tree will be covered in purple flowers.

Wastelands: Age of Iron

Returning home from Wastelands was like coming back from Clarion. I was just getting into the swing of being around like-minded people who love sf, fantasy....and (best of all) Steampunk and it was time to go.

It was:

Fun and frightening reading out my paper (a first for me).

Great catching up with friends new and old.

Awesome listening to Nick Stathopoulos about art and the titanic and Mr Squiggle.

Fantastic eating cupcakes and drinking tea and talking with the ladies from Twelfth Planet Press.

Amazing looking at all the dress ups. There's something about the Victorian costume that makes me wish we still dressed like that, except maybe for the corsets in summer. And, of course, the girl who gave me a business card advertising "The Arte of Weaponry" was dressed totally the coolest. And so was Lily Chrywenstrom who seemed to be dressed in something different every time I saw her!!

A totally awesome time. Congratulations Callistra and Cheshirenoir for a job excellently done.

Next steampunk convention, I'm dressing up!

Wastelands: Age of Iron

I'm presenting a paper at Wastelands tomorrow morning:

A Brief History of Steampunk: What Wound It Up and Why It Still Ticks

Steampunk can be purely science fictional or a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, suffused with anything from a heavy dash to a light sprinkling of neo-Victorianism. So why not neo-classicism? Or druidism? Or Roman chariotpunk? What is it about the Victorians that secures their place in steampunk? To explore this question, I will look at works of proto-science fiction, beginning from the early 1800s, following an evolutionary branch to the works of Jeter, Powers, Blaylock, Gibson, Sterling and Mieville.

And While I'm on the Subject of Caves

Back when I scuba dived Piccaninnie Ponds, Mt Gambier, I managed to take a few fuzzy photos underwater. This video from wavesncaves on YouTube brings it all back much more clearly though.



My best dive in Pics was a night dive when the water was so clear it felt like you could see forever. On the way back up again, you'd stop at about 30ft and turn your torch off and look up and see the stars. It felt just like floating in space.

And to think, if I hadn't read Jules Verne's novels, I might not have done this.

Steampunky Trivia

Dare I admit how long ago it was that I read the works of Jules Verne? Journey To the Centre of the Earth was my first SF novel. That impressed me so much that I kept reading SF and, when I grew up, took up caving and cave diving for a few years. Today I decided to have a reread of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in preparation for the paper I'm giving at Wastelands: Age of Iron. How tickled was I to relearn that Captain Nemo's Nautilus was powered by electricity.

All you DIY steampunkers and steampunk musicians whose awesome creations get dissed because they don't spout steam, here's your defence: The Nautilus didn't spout steam either!!

I know, I'm a failed blogger

Anyhow, here's some nice pics of Seattle:

The Suzallo Library, where I spent a few relaxed hours writing and critting:



Mt Rainier from Red Square:



A pretty street near UW:

I'm Home

Have been home for about 10 days. And I'm sorry for not blogging Seattle, but the writing experience turned out to be so intense, I ended up eating, sleeping (not much sleeping, mind you), writing and critting 7 days a week. That's what I went for, so I'm happy.

Anyhow, I'll get back into blogging soon, write some more about Seattle. The trip home was great -- all 40 sleep deprived hours of it -- thanks to the turbulence all the way from LA to Taipei. If it wasn't for this hilarious Japanese time travel movie, Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust (2007), I might not have survived. Here's the trailer:

Seattle Week 1

I'm over the jet lag, but the urge to write a story is much greater than the urge to blog. So here's a quick run down of what I've been up to since leaving Perth.

Highlight of the Flight: Seeing snow-capped Mt Fuji from the plane and a minefield of volcanoes on the approach to Seattle.

Awesome People I've spoken to: Vonda N. McIntyre, William Gibson, Paul Park, Gardner Dozois, Nisi Shawl, Connie Willis, Eileen Gunn

Awesome People I've heard speak on panels: Neil Stephenson, Jack Womack, Greg Bear, Charles N Brown plus some of above

Awesome People I've heard speak at the Hall of Fame: Peter Beagle, David Hartwell, Richard Gid Powers and Family, Rod Serling's Family and some of the above.

Awesome News I've heard: The announcement of the Locus Awards for Shaun Tan (for The Arrival ) and Jonathan Strahan (for The New Space Opera ed with Garder Dozois)

Spent lots of hours exploring nearby Seattle, sometimes with a walking stick, sometimes without, depending on how my foot feels at the time.

Finally, here's a picture which I'm sure BJR will love:

Blogging Seattle

My son came home from school yesterday and told me that someone who reads my blog (Hello Elimy) is tired of reading the Steampunk entry I wrote back in April and wants to read something else. So, okay, here's something...

I'm off to Clarion West Seattle next week. Lists have been written, jobs have been finished, plans have been made. Just when I thought everything was running smoothly, I fell off a step and broke a bone in the top my foot (Navicular). Fortunately, after resting up for a few days (Ohhhh how frustrating), I can walk on it again, but only if I wear my hiking boots for ankle support. Well...I'm not going to argue with that because I love my hiking boots.

So now I'm frantically catching up again. I'd hoped to do some writing in preparation for Clarion, but I've done very little as I've been madly finishing off my proposal and writing a novel chapter so that when I get back I'll still be up to date with my uni timetable. I hear it's good to go with a clean slate, anyway. Hopefully, I'll leave all my old bad writing habits behind me, try things I haven't tried writing before, surprise myself.

My aim is to blog the Clarion Experience as much as I can without it interfering with my writing. So I'll aim for once a week, and possibly fit in a tad more.

Steampunk Music

I was looking up Seattle today and found this link to Abney Park. I'm really liking this genre.

Reading Frenzy

I've got to get this proposal out of the way, so I'm reading like crazy. This week I finished off China Mieville's Perdido Street Station which is a veritable feast and one book (along with The Scar and probably King Rat) that I'm going to refer to a lot in my PhD essay. Also read K.W. Jeter's Morlock Nights which is one of the first (or maybe THE first) Steampunk novel. I found this really useful in deciding which themes I want to pursue when I write about Mieville's work because it's by far less complex and easier to critique. Now I'm halfway through Gibson & Stirling's The Difference Engine which I hope to finish tomorrow. I love the writing in this book and I keep trying to figure out which bits Stirling wrote and which bits Gibson wrote, but that's not what I'm supposed to be looking for. Once that's read, I'm going to knuckle down to some proposal writing and also try and get through Tim Powers' Anubis Gates and something by Moorecock and Sean McMullen and maybe Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Busy times ahead.

Hint: If your having trouble with pantry moths (which I am right now), Perdido Street Station is probably only going to make matters worse!!!

Why Seattle

A friend asked me yesterday why I chose to apply to Clarion West, Seattle over San Diego and Brisbane. I've got to say, it was a difficult choice. All three Clarions have an excellent line up of tutors this year and I've heard excellent reports about all three from past students. If I'd had to base my decision on that alone, I would have ended up just pulling a straw out of a hat. Even when I sat down and thought hard about it, there were pros and cons on all three sides.

Brisbane Clarion, unfortunately is bad timing for me. January is Aussie summer and school holidays and the only time of the year all five of us are operating on the same wavelength. I'd hate to miss out on that. San Diego and Seattle Clarions, however, are right in the middle of Aussie winter. The kids have a 2 week break and Phil can take time off work to spend time with them. That leaves only 2 1/2 weeks of school either side of school hols. My 16 year old has end of semester exams, but my plan is to harass her into studying a few weeks before so she's at least a bit better prepared than she would have been if I were there. My 18 year old will be on uni break and my 13 year old will be simply cruising, as usual. So hopefully, when the time comes, I won't feel too guilty about leaving them. Next deciding factor was climate. Seattle is mild, San Diego is hot. I'll take mild over hot anytime. Also, I visited San Diego about 20 years ago, but not Seattle. Plus, Seattle has an enormous volcano (Mt Rainier) which might have some snow on top while I'm there, and will definitely have some walking tracks and spectacular woodland around it, so that's where I'm heading after the workshop: Mt Rainier for a day walk (or two).

I still can't believe I'm actually going!!!!

Edit: Another reason why it's better for me to do Clarion in June rather than January is that I'd be doing it early in my PhD rather than a third of the way through. That gives me more time to use what I learned, I reckon.

Still Flabbergasted About Clarion

Today I really want to get my 500 words done, plus make headway on my PhD proposal, which of course, means lots of reading and thinking and 15 pages of theoretical writing. The trouble is, I want to do it all at once. And now I want to write a short story or two as practice for Clarion. I've been working on this novel for months, planning, writing, experimenting. I think I'm finally getting a good idea about what I want to do (Steampunk fantasy! who would have thought!). The world building has come together nicely. I have six very troubled characters and a tangled plot, which is possibly a reflection of my mental state at the moment (in a good way).

I also have an idea for a short story set in the world of my novel. I'm wondering if I should just let it ferment a bit in my head, then write it at Clarion in week one, to get me started. Last time I did that, with the 'Bridal Bier' -- a story I pretty much wrote over a week when I was supposed to be writing an English Essay on 'Why is Frankenstein' more than a gothic novel' -- I ended up with a pretty neat story, which ended up in Eidolon 1 and a couple of shortlists. At the time, it felt like a fluke, but now I think it was more the product of a few months of fermenting in my head.

This blog entry seems a bit stream-of-consciousness unfocussed, I know. But that's how my head's operating at the moment. Tomorrow, I'm booking my flight: most likely Seattle via Tokyo. Plus I'm back on hunter-gatherer food again, trying to keep the migraines at bay. Haven't had one in two weeks, so I guess it's working, probably because I'm not getting any refined sugar or msg (or basically, anything processed). Last time I did the hunter-gatherer thing, I remained migraine free for 8 weeks. It's hard on the will power, but worth it. Well worth it! And once you get the hang of it, it's easy to do: fresh fruit, veges and good, natural protein like eggs, fish, meat, nuts.

And the good news is...

I've started my PhD. I'm writing at least 500 words of my novel per day. Daylight savings ends this weekend. I'm going to see Miss Saigon on Saturday. I'm going to the graduation ceremony to pick up my Honours on Monday. I get my first pay check from my scholarship soooon....

and this morning I got a phone call from Seattle.

I'm going to CLARION WEST!!!! YAY!!!!

Review: Tumble by Trent Jamieson (Podcast)

Online at Pseudopod 74 25th January, 2008

I’m a big fan of podcasts, especially literary ones. I wack them on my ipod, then go for a walk around the burbs for an hour or two and come back well exercised and a little bit happier for having achieved two things at once. So when I discovered Pseudopod – a free horror podcaster – I thought I’d give it a try.

Horror is a genre I approach with trepidation. I’ve got to be in the mood to willingly stick with a character who, by dint of some twisted literary convention, is doomed. If I’m tempted to read horror, I look for stories that promise more than a vicarious shudder.

After listening to the first paragraph of Trent Jamieson’s Tumble with its juxtaposition of the fantastic and the believable (tiny cockroaches hissing in Mother Beet’s eyeball, perhaps irritated by the smoke of her cigarello) I knew I'd found something worth reading (or more accurately, listening to). The language is mature and convincing enough to give me more than one “aha” moment. When the narrator, Grieve, waxed philosophical, I knew exactly what he was on about, despite having been dropped into his strange and frightening world only minutes before.

Mother Beet is a scary crone in a world where demons run riot, where cities outside the main city (named Wish) are falling to ruin. Mother Beet’s son, Daniel, is even worse, a cold blooded murderer who has been known to eat the still-beating hearts of his victims. Grieve is ordered by Wish to eliminate Daniel and, although Grieve is no lawman at heart, he’s addicted to Wish and cannot refuse.

I found this story interesting because the horror works on two levels. In the big picture, there’s this science fictional world where people are literally addicted to a city that both nurtures and controls them. This is a neat statement about the way today’s city dwellers are addicted to and controlled by consumerism. It not only provides an unusual backdrop to the story, but also adds to the inevitable horror at the story’s conclusion.

On the second, more personal level, we have Grieve who is street-wise and driven, but terrified of the evil he chases. He must face it head on, no hesitation, no backing down. Even so, his success is not guaranteed even after the battle is over. That’s the trouble with evil. By the time I neared the end I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, things would work out for Grieve. But this is horror, right? Things do work out in horror, but not how you want.

Fortunately (for me) the gory bits are not overdone. Some is told with minimalist precision, enough to make me shudder but not enough to make me want to switch my ipod over to something a little less confronting. Other bits are told by evading the usual signifiers of violence and referring instead to peripheral happenings or memory. I found myself shocked by Mother Beet’s murder (told in flashback) almost as much as if I’d been shown it all in stream-of-consciousness detail.

Reading horror is one thing, listening to it is another. You absorb the words at a slower pace. There’s time to let them marinate and work up a stew of emotions. There’s inflexions and emphases that only a speaker can impart. Cheynne Wright’s voice is decidedly creepy in this podcast, and certainly adds a dark tone to an already dark story. After listening to the story twice (I walked 9 km during that time), I switched off and, for a few moments, felt a tad disorientated as if I'd returned from somewhere else. Suddenly, the Perth city skyline looked really pretty in sunlight.

A brief Getaway

One reason why I love Eagle Bay



But three days isn't enough...
Now it's back to work. My MA (soon to be PhD) has begun...

Human v Inhuman II

Review: Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar

Online at fantasy magazine 21st january, 2008

Spoiler Warning: Maybe this is more of a critique than a review. I don't like spoilers, but found it hard to write about this story without giving (what some readers may think) too much away. I don't think I have, but I thought I'd warn you just in case.

A tale of paternal love that is undermined by selfishness and greed. A man forces his daughter, Pahwakhe, to marry a ghostly visitor: a musician who takes her away to a place beyond the limits of the living. A year later a child is born – part-human/part-ghost – but it does not fit into its ghostly father’s world, so Pahwakhe returns to her parents, hoping her child can fit in here. Human love, it turns out, has the potential to either save this child or destroy it.

Pahwakhe is told mostly in the form of flashback and from first person point of view. This works really well here because, by choosing to leave certain emotions unsaid, the narrator (Pahwakhe’s father) exposes his flaws. His tragic moments are often understated yet at the same time illuminated.

The story feels very much like a tale told by a fireside. It is framed by two scenes set in the present which serve firstly to foreshadow the conflict and lastly, to reinforce the magnitude of that conflict. The prose is sometimes stark, sometimes lyrical and filled with images of startling clarity:

The singing voices out on the water are moving, sad fiddles calling out like broken birds. They’re coming here. I never imagined them returning.

The setting has an unearthly feel to it, possibly because there is little in the way of description of the normal world. The reader senses that the village is somewhere in North America from keywords such as ‘longhouse’ and ‘chiefs’ and ‘pemmican’, however the lack of reference to any distinctive feature does not rule out that this story could also be set in Polynesia, perhaps on a volcanic stony beach. But this does not matter. What’s important is the overlap between the worlds of the living and the dead: the fog through which the visitors arrive, the unsettling music, the ghostly faces.

On my first reading, I wasn’t sure if the narrator’s claim that the visitors were ghosts was meant to be taken literally or not. It rings true with indigenous people’s first encounters with Europeans, where they believed that pale skinned people were returned spirits, where poor farming practices damaged the land. I like this ambiguity. It grounds the story in both the real and the fantastic. Not knowing what is really happening until later is more unsettling than being told outright.

Although the narrator often understates his emotions, he is clearly miserable. This misery can be felt through his observations, eg, the strangers’ words were “heavy like stones” followed up later with “I cannot find the words. They’re heavy on my tongue, too, now.” His strongest emotion however – the one he dwells on the most – is his yearning to possess first his daughter and then later, his grandchild. Disturbingly, it is not love or sadness or remorse that he articulates most clearly, but his need to possess. For me, this is yet another of the story’s strengths.

Interesting to note is that where the previous story I reviewed (How To Hide Your Heart by Deborah Coates) focuses on acknowledging one’s humanity as a means to survive, this story does the opposite by showing humanity in a far from ideal form. Rather than bring people together, it drives them apart.

If I say any more, I’ll give away the ending. Instead, go read it yourself. It’s a neat little story with a lot to say.

On Reviewing

This reviewing thing is a new experience for me. I’m new to the genre of fantasy, new to being a full-time writer/student. In the meantime, I’m just finding my feet – figuring out what’s new in fantasy literature, what’s old, what’s over-used, what’s different., what can and can’t be done. At this stage in my studies, I’m not sure. So most of my early reviews will not be taking historical aspects into consideration. I’ve yet to learn which themes have been done to death and how, what’s cliché and what’s not. I have a fair idea, but that’s all. I’ll need to read some more to make sure. Hopefully I’ll learn how to make old themes look original (if such a thing is possible). So right now I’m reading and reviewing purely for the pleasure of it. Purely for the story.

I’ve started by looking up Duotrope’s Digest (A Resource for Fiction Writers and Poets). This generated a long list of online fantasy magazines to sort through. Thus begins this current leg of my journey…

Human v Inhuman

Review: How To Hide Your Heart
by Deborah Coates

Online at Strange Horizons
21st January, 2008


Max is a hunter of ‘Things’: inhuman creatures (or maybe demons) that take the form of ‘not-zombies’, ‘not-vampires’, ‘not-wendigoes’. When not hunting, Max attempts to deny his own humanity by remaining homeless, indulging himself in brief liaisons with “girls whose hearts won't break.” When hunting, he is helped by people who do not understand what they are helping with.

Then he meets Beth. Plain, sloppily dressed, Beth’s only promising feature appears to be her prowess at driving cars. But Beth, it turns out, knows more about ‘Things’ than Max realizes. Max wants to use her for her skill and then forget her; but Beth is much more world-wise than she looks. Her connection with Max has the potential to make or break him.

There’s a lot I liked about this piece of urban fantasy. I liked the way the inhuman creatures mean different things to different people. The reader doesn’t really get to ‘see’ what they look like – or even understand what they are – but mostly ‘feels’ their effects: the fear they provoke and the deadly chase where the stakes are not exactly spelled out but are implied as being more than just a loss of life. Even in the story’s two violent encounters we see only darkness, shadows and claws. The only thing we are really sure of is that there’s going to be a battle.

Without the added strength provided by the tentative relationship between Beth & Max, I think this story would have ended up as just another ‘let’s go kill monsters’ story'. On the other hand, without the monsters, Beth and Max would never have connected, let alone found common ground. As unlikely as it seems (in Max’s mind), the two spark from the beginning, albeit reluctantly. This compelled me to read on and although the ending is by no means a resolution, it is certainly a satisfying exploration of human need struggling in the shadow of inhuman aspiration.

Reviewing

I'm certainly not a practiced reviewer, but I thought I'd have a go at writing one a couple of times a week. I'm pretty sure there's a handful of friends who are interested in reading and writing as much as I am. Satima? Helen? Sonia? Jessica? Anudhara?

Okay, so I'm blogging my thoughts on people's stories. I'm only going to write about the ones I like at this stage. Plus I'm currently learning about reading fantasy (in the past I've read mostly science fiction), so hopefully this will give me a better understanding. Did I tell you my thesis is about fantasy?

Oh...and if I don't review your story, it doesn't mean I didn't like it. There's way to many stories for me to blog them all, let alone read them :)