I’ll be coming back to the blog soon, but in the meantime here’s a wonderful advertisement for Chuck McKenzie’s Notion Unlimited bookstore in Melbourne.

I love Kevin.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

I’m busy at the moment – you’ll see why shortly – so I haven’t had time to blog.  (One of these day I’ll do those other Hugo posts that I’ve been threatening to write).  In the meantime, here’s some links to the brilliant thoughts of a bunch of people I respect.  (All of whom should be nominated for BEST FAN WRITER!!!!!)

• An excellent review of Embassytown by Maureen Kincaid Speller;
• Most of you will have seen this one, but here’s Jim Hines posing like a man (on book covers I mean, because he’s already a man and doesn’t need to pose as himself);
• Of course, you’ll need to follow that post up with this one by Kirstyn on the “False Equivalence”;
• This is possibly the greatest Ditmar-related post ever written (and everyone knows how much I love Robin Penn’s Ditmar-wank posts).  But here’s Ben Peek describing his eternal always-be-a-Ditmar-nominee-and-never-a-winner-struggle with Bill Wright;
• acrackedmoon has these sobering thoughts on men vaulting low bars when it comes to feminist discourse;
• Slightly old news here coz the Clarke Award winner has been announced, but here’s what David Hebblethwaite had to say about the nominees;
• Just do yourself a favour and add Kirstyn to your RSS Feed;
• And we end with someone who MUST be on the best fan writers Hugo ballot in 2013.  Cat Valente on why she will never talk down to your children.  This actually made me cry.

Enjoy.  I did.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

Based on comments made by others to my previous post, I thought I’d dig a little deeper… which means more fun with Excel!  (I apologise in advance to anyone on LJ as the charts don’t seem to come out, but feel free to check them out on my WordPress blog).

Novel

From 2003 to 2008 Best Novel was dominated by men.  But the last few years has actually seen this category move to near parity with an overall 54% to 46% split in favour of the men.  (This is why you need to look at more than one year when discussing issues of gender parity).

Novella

Apparently there was no novella award in 2003.  The split here is 64% to 36% in favour of men.  Without the last three years that split widens even further to 76% compared to 24%.

Short Story

In complete contrast to the Novella category, the Short Fiction category has always been female-friendly (in terms of nominations and awards).  The split is 63% to 37% in favour of women.

Overall – 2003 to 2009

This is how the Ditmar Awards were looking before the 2010 ballot was announced – with the Short Fiction category easily featuring the most female nominations.

Overall (the full 10 years)

A remarkable change.  The last three years brings us so close to actual parity (dictionary definition and all).  The raw numbers are 84 nomination to men to 80 nominations to woman.

Hope that helps.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

I was sitting with Jules last week watching The Voice on fast forward (we record it then zip through all the boring bits) and I suddenly has this urge to number crunch the Ditmars.  Admittedly, it was an urge sparked by the recent Ditmar ballot which can be found here.

Of course, whenever anyone says number crunch in the same sentence as awards, it usually means a look at the gender split.  And hey, why buck the trend now.

At first I decided to start at 2007, but tonight I thought it’d be more interesting looking at the last 10 years starting with 2003.

I was also only interested in the three fiction categories – Novel, Novella and Short Story.  I did consider throwing in Collected Works / Anthologies but decided against it because what I wanted to look at was whether female writers were being recognised in Australia.

This is what I discovered:

So what does this well put together chart tell us?*  I have no idea, I just like fiddling with Excel  Well, obviously it shows a shift, starting around 2008, from an award that mostly featured male writers to a ballot that, by 2012, had an 84% / 16% split in favour of female writers.

On its own that shift is pretty remarkable when compared to genre award ballots across the world.  But it’s more then that, it also shows the amazing work that has been done in this country by female (and some male) writers and pundits to not only promote brilliant works written by woman, but also publish them.

And that’s what I really want to focus on.  Not the number themselves – which are always just an output, a symptom, a result – but at the causes, at the reasons why a shift like the one above has occurred.  In the last few years, Twelfth Planet Press and Ticonderoga Publications have taken great strides in ensuring that high quality fiction by women is published.**  And not just a book here and a book there, but on a regular basis.  Case in point, the Twelve Planets project.

Yes, the effect is only local.  Australia is tiny when compared to genre giants in the US and UK.  And if only 60 or 70 people are nominating for the Ditmars, and if Twelfth Planet Press or Ticon books are only selling a handful of copies then does it really mean anything.

Fuck yes, it does.  It shows that even in a tiny little pond like Australia, women writers can find a voice, they can be published and their work will be read, even if it’s only by the locals who know that the wider world is missing out.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m a little bit proud that in Australia we have people who have put in the hard work – both time and money – to allow women to be heard.  Sue me for being parochial.

The Ditmar does get flack for being an award open to all sorts of corruption.  But if we can look past the cynicism and the bitchiness we should see this ballot as reflecting a progressive fan culture not afraid to publish, to read, to nominate and to award works written by women in Australia.

*Sorry about the colour selection, but I’m colour blind so I like to pick bold colours that I can tell apart.

** I also shouldn’t forget some of the larger Australian publishers, especially Voyager, who’ve never been afraid at publishing novels by women.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

A couple of Kickstarter projects that are worth boosting.

The Brydge iPad keyboard doesn’t need my help.  It’s well and truly funded.  But when I saw it, I needed it.  and best of all it comes out in mid October, just for my birthday.

And with 12 days to go, it’s certainly worth your while putting your support behind M K Hobson’s The Warlock’s Curse.  It’s Book Three of the Veneficas Americana series which includes Nebula Award nominated Native Son.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

The 2012 Ditmar ballot was announced last week. I’m chuffed that Writer and the Critic appears in Best Fan Publication in Any Medium.

I always look forward to my podcast night with Kirstyn. Not just because she provides baked goods – seriously there are gingerbread men and then there are the gingerbread men baked by Kirstyn – but because her insights blow me away. Just take what she said about the gender of stick men in the last podcast. Seriously, I can’t help but look at that genderless stick person at the front of the men’s toilets and wonder why it doesn’t have a scrotum sack hanging off it.

Aside from that I’m proud to feature with two Hugo nominated podcasts (even if they both use Skype). Seriously, podcasting in Australia is a force to be reckoned with. Coode Street, with it’s quirky Jonathan / Gary chemistry and its awesome interviews (some of the best I’ve heard) deserves to be recognized as one of the best SF podcasts.

As for Galactic Suburbia – well it would be a tad melodramatic to say that it changed my life. But let’s be clear here, Tansy, Alex and Alisa took a 37 year old fanboy, absolutely set in his ways (just ask my wife and how I deal with my underpants) and somehow etched new neural pathways in his brain. Which is a shitty way of saying that they opened my eyes to the issue of gender.

And so, yeah, I’m proud to be side by side with these guys.

But what’s also great is that the four podcasts that feature (Galactic Chat may not be as influential as the other two, but it has caused me to buy more books) don’t even touch the edges of the wonderful Aussie podcasts out there. I’m not going to mention them now – just to say that knowing there’s some strong stuff out there makes me even prouder to be nominated.

Oh, and then there’s Bruce Gillespie. I know it probably sticks in his craw that he’s up against a bunch of people who speak in microphones. But that doesn’t matter. Because without getting all soppy and sad, Bruce is a legend of Australia fandom. A genuine man of letters who should have already received a Hugo. And if you haven’t read SF Commentary, you really should.

OK enough with all that back slapping and praise… I’ve got one more post to go on regarding the Ditmars where I might actually talk about the other categories.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

As usual I’m late to the party, but the Shirley Jackson Award nominees were announced a few days ago.  The full list is here.

Because this is a juried award, I take great interest in categories like Best Novel.  Essentially I see it as a potential reading list.  Of the 6 books announced, I own two (the Cisco and the Duncan, though I haven’t read them) and I’ve never heard of the other four.

I think this is exciting.  With an ego as big as mine it’s easy to be convinced that any book worth reading I already know about.  So to come across four unknown novels chosen by a group of judges represented by the likes of  Laird Barron, Gary K Wolfe and Karon Warren, you can’t help but get that “shiny new book” tingle.

Or maybe that’s just me.

And because I’m also parochial, I want to congratulate fellow Aussie Deb Biancotti for her nomination (“And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living,” (Ishtar, Gilgamesh Press)).  I haven’t read the novella, but I have read Deb’s work (as recently as Bad Power) and she’s a marvelous writer who deserves the recognition.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

Here’s the actual ballot:.

Best Graphic Story (339 ballots)

• Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)
• Fables Vol 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)
• Locke & Key Volume 4, Keys to the Kingdom written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
• Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication written and illustrated by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (The Tayler Corporation)
• The Unwritten (Volume 4): Leviathan created by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)

When this category was introduced a couple of years back I wasn’t that interested.  I didn’t read comics, hadn’t for a good twenty years.  And when the Foglio’s won it for a second year and I heard that the category would unlikely survive after 2012, I  had zero care factor.

Then around August last year DC Comics launched its New 52 line and decided to release digital comics on the same day as the hard-copy version.  And suddenly I was reading comics, lots and lots of comics.  Seriously, fuck loads of them.

So as of today I do give a shit about this category.  I want it to survive just so I get the opportunity next year – with 12 good months of comics reading behind me – to actually nominate a series of graphic stories that I think deserve to be on the ballot.

And If WSFS has any common sense they’ll realise that I’m not alone, that DC’s decision, the decision of Marvel and the independents to follow the suit, and the fact that reading on the iPad has made it so much easier for non-comics readers like me, should keep this category alive for another year or so.

As for the ballot itself.  Fables is always good, though I feel it’s begun to lose momentum (though I’m 20 issues behind). 

The Unwritten is also good, it’s very literate and smart and the storyline is compelling.  That said, sometimes it’s hard to get passed the dick that is Tommy Taylor.  I feel the story would be so much more interesting if Tommy just died (then again, I’m also about 10 or 12 issues behind, so maybe he grows a character).

And I’ve only just started reading Locke and Key and based on what I’ve read of the first volume it looks like it’s going to be fun.

I can’t speak to the two web-comics because I haven’t read them, though I might try them out.

But when I consider some of the comics I’m reading right now, comics like Who Is Jake Ellis? and American Vampire and iZombie (I mean how does that not get nominated) and Witch Doctor and the list goes on, then I know that there’s plenty of room to move with Best Graphic Story and I want to be part of that show.

But we shall see.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

It’s a good ‘un.

You will never look at stick figures the same way again.  I promise!

I’m also curious to get feedback on the Effinger book.  So feel free to send feedback here to or the writer and critic gmail address.

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.

I’m not good with the whole link salad thing.  But as I said in this post, I’m going to spend this year and next linking to the best articles and rants and reviews I come across.  I’m calling it fan-writing, but it doesn’t necessarily need to have been written by a fan or be about fannish issues.  It just has to be good shit that makes you think.

And I’m happy to take suggestions if anyone comes across something that I might have missed.

So here we go:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock that doesn’t get 3G or wireless you’ve probably already read Nick Mamatas’ take on Geek Pride.  In short, I couldn’t agree more.

Timmi Duchamp is one of those fantastic writers who I forgot to mention in my Hugo post.  Her blog entry here on a shocking legislative development in Arizona is an example of her powerful writing.  I read this piece on a packed tram heading back to work after a meeting and I seriously wanted to shout and yell and be generally angry with the narrow minded stupidity of certain legislators.  I just silently fumed instead.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy Martin Lewis’ reviews.  I’m hoping this post where Martin explores Hartwell and Kramer’s definition of Space Opera is the start of another of his Short Story Projects.

Kirstyn is back to posting on her blog again.  This blog entry, posted shortly after Cat Valente’s post on Chris Priest and gender, just reminded me of how much I missed her non-fiction writing.

Enjoy!

Mirrored from The Hysterical Hamster.